Frankenstein, E
by author1993
Summary: This is a project I did for English. Its sort of a sequel staring Ernest, Victor's brother and one family member who didn't die in the orginal novel. As Ernest grows up in the world all alone trouble continues to haunt him. Please review.
1. Prologue: Alone

"Frankenstein, E."

My name is Ernest Benjamin Frankenstein, call me Ernie if you like, honestly you could call me Johnny the Leprechaun if it makes you happy, it really doesn't matter, but generally people go with Ernie.

Or rather, people used to go with Ernie, before they were stripped away one by one. I am only 16 and yet in that time I have lost more and been a victim of misery worse than that in the culmination of any old man's life. My life had been full of caring, loving, intelligent, and compassionate people. Good people, and apparently in this world such was a crime, punishable with death.

As a younger child my mother died of a sickness shortly after nursing my "cousin" back from it. Oh the agony! The despair I felt I thought insurmountable, but I did not yet realize the blessing in that that event was natural, and there were still many I loved to find comfort in. How dramatic, that the death of one's own mother now seems a minor speed bump, the pain minimal in comparison.

In these past years I have lost as I had not imagined possible. The first was my brother William, taken so unjustly, murdered he was! MURDERED, and at five, Five! His innocence supreme, his joyful spirit uncontained, his potential immeasurable, taking such life, so could be compared to Satan, shooting down a glowing angel from the heavens. And who, indeed, could be responsible for this, as if the pain of sweet and dear William's death were not enough? It was Justine, she so loving who had been taken with grace by family, she who had always radiated peace and kindness with so respectful an air, _she_ betrayed me, she betrayed us all. And convicted she was death found its way to take another from me. I barely felt human anymore than, I could not process that these events really happened to me.

However, at the time there was a silver lining, a beacon of hope, if you buy into that sort of thing, as I did at the time, not yet tainted enough by misery to have that inert youthful innocence of irrepressible hope obliterated by reality, but I digress.

It was the returned presence of my brother that brought me even the slightest repercussions of happiness in this bleak time. He had been gone away to the university in Ingolstadt for several years and had took to not writing, not once did he pay a visit home, despite our constant inquires to his occupations and overall well-being. A year or so before the events with William, dear family friend, Henry Clerval had finally convinced his father to let him attend school, and relayed to us that Victor was indeed unwell. Overtime we received news that Victor's health increased under the care of Clerval and soon we even received a letter in his own hand.

I can not convey the joy expressed by my cousin, Elizabeth, when she at last read words from the much missed loved one. Furthermore it was that he was indeed planning to return home, although several accidents would cause delay.

True his final arrival was tainted by the fact that it was in response to the death of William, but a great nevertheless.

He was not himself though, even now I am clueless as what took place in those years he was away from us, but I noticed, more than the others perhaps, that the Victor who came back was not the same on who left. Something haunted him greatly, and there was a sickness in his air, as if he were slowly dying, and it was by a force so powerful and uncontrollable I deemed it nature, and did my best to push it out of my thoughts, for if it was indeed so there was nothing that could be done, and I had to enjoy what time I had.

But yes Victor was home, and although he did on occasion fall into fits where he became foreign to us and sought isolation, all the time he grew healthier, and I began to think, in the back of my head, where the thoughts of his impending death had been pushed, that perhaps it was to so inevitable.

One day after conversation with my father, Victor took us all for a surprise in saying that he necessitated a trip to England. My father, ever weary of his condition, had him agree to the companionship of Clerval on this journey and then he was off.

We only received letters of joy and wonder from Clerval at the sights they encountered and we were all infected with the feeling, sure things were finally looking up, but fate is a cruel friend.

Soon received news that Victor was sick again, his condition worse then ever, and in the same letter we were informed that our dear friend, bright and young Clerval, was dead, murdered.

"What curse," I asked myself, "has been cast upon me? What force has no mercy for the torment of my soul?" And come to pass how should these two events have come to notice in the same letter? It was from the prison, where Victor was being held, suspected of being Clerval's murderer.

I did not let my mind ponder this thought, I deemed it neither truth or false, remembering the account with Justine, but simply removed all thoughts around it from my mind making it as if Victor were dead too, or rather his existence was temporarily void. Since my earliest recollections I held my brother on a plate form, his inquisitive soul, intelligent mind, and romantic nature were all that I hoped to be, and I was sure to see him fall so would be my own destruction.

In this once instance I will record that luck did indeed strike upon me and when my father went to visit Victor, he returned with him, innocent and healthier to the degree he knew what was taking place about him. However there was a tangible anxiety in the air around him, as if he were haunted by a phantom very real and very dangerous to him, but all negative thoughts were pushed from my mind when his marriage to our cousin was announced.

Evil fate! There again it was only playing its torturous tricks on me. On the very night of our celebrations I was struck again. Like lightening were these attacks in the suddenness, swiftness, and destructiveness, but lightening is never supposed to strike the same place twice, and my attacks had been endless. Can you yet guess? Elizabeth was dead. Victor returned to us, and the news took my father.

I am sure it seems I fly through these deaths now, and you wonder where the lengthy explanations of those earlier are. In truth I can no longer truly reflect in detail, at that point in my life I entered a state of numbness, and my memories are covered with a thick fog; there are pains too much for the mind to allow.

But now everything is unbearably clear. Each tick of the clock is a dreadful dragging moment of agony forever imprinted upon me. I know exactly when I made this transition too, 1 year, 2 months, 5 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, and 52 seconds ago…53…54…when Victor left.

It was the middle of the night when I was roused from a fitful sleep I had just fallen into still mourning the death of my father. Victor was standing over me, his eyes wild, and I realized he had gone mad, and that it had happened long ago. That which haunted him was his own deranged mind.

He had a suitcase in his hand and he swung me over his shoulder. We got in the carriage and were off. I wanted to ask where we were going but I was afraid, and overwhelmed by this sudden awareness after all that numbness.

We stopped in front of the Geneva home for orphaned boys. It was raining that night. I can still hear our steps sloshing across the sidewalk and up the front steps. We went straight to the headmaster's office and to my surprise a light was on inside. Victor told me to wait outside. I stood there just waiting, not in shock just calculating. It didn't make sense.

I heard some quick hushed words then Victor came back and placed his hands on either of my shoulders and looked at me with piercing eyes, desperate for understanding, "Ernest…"

His eyes pleaded with me and suddenly everything clicked in my head. He may be mad but he is my brother, and he was all I had. I also knew what was going on. "I know," I said, "you have to go, but you'll come back for me, when you're done doing whatever you have to do. I have to stay here when you do it but you'll come back for me." Why does it sound like I was trying to convince myself more than comfort him?

Anyway when I said that his eyes turned and I could no longer read what he was feeling. He got up and walked out. After a short moment I followed him. I do not know what possessed me to do so, I was not chasing after or trying to stop him. I just walked calmly out the door into the pouring rain, down the steps, and fell to my knees a couple paces further. "You'll come back for me…" I started repeating over and over, it was like a chant as I watched him climb into the carriage.

A clash of lightening coincided with the crack of the whip and the carriage was off, Victor never looked back.

Suddenly I was screaming "YOU'LL COME BACK FOR ME…" The phrase ripped itself from my throat without end, raging like fire. It only stopped when I collapsed out of breath on the wet pavement.

The headmaster had at some point joined me out in the rain, he leaned down and put his hand on my back and said, "Its time to come in Ernest," with a soft voice and gentle eyes.

I just stared at him, I couldn't seem to work my body, either to get up and follow him, for I really was ridiculously wet, or to tell him he was using the wrong voice. That voice was for the boys who came here for forever, not for your guest who was going to use your services for a short time whiles their caretaker was away.

He sighed and picked my frail frame of the ground and began to carry me inside. "There, there now, every thing is going to be fine. A strapping young lad like you will have more friends than you can count here before you know it. Don't worry."

These words were wrong too. They were comfort for those who needed comforting, they were…

"_Frankenstein, E._"

A chuckle ran through the class room and I looked up at the professor who was staring at me, apparently this wasn't the first time I'd been called. "Present." I called.

"In body but apparently not in mind!" the stout man snapped, and then raised a thin envelope, "If you would care to retrieve it, there is a letter here for you Mr. Frankenstein."

I got up and started walking down to isle to him. Around me I saw all the other kids, and continuing my reflection, they are the ones for whose the headmaster's words were meant that night, not me. "You'll come back for me…" I'd said, over and over again. I realize now that I was stuttering, trying to get out the rest of the sentence. "…because it's a lie." The sign on the door says "Geneva home for _orphaned _boys".

All those eyes that stared at me as I walked up the isle belonged here, I did not. Me existence here was a lie. They were alone. They had no one. I had Victor. I was not alone.

I took the letter from the professor's hand and opened it.

_To Ernest Frankenstein,_

_I send this letter directly to you, you dear ill-fated young boy, because I know that there is no one it my go through first so that they may portray to you its gruesome news and soften the blow. On my expedition I picked up a man strangled on the ice, your brother, Victor. He was very sick and I am afraid has left us._

_My dearest condolences to you, you unfortunate boy,_

_Robert Walton_

Forgive me I was wrong. I have no one. I am alone; completely and utterly alone.


	2. 1 Out

**Almost 2 years later**

Sometimes, even now, I feel as though I will soon wake up and find this all to be nothing more than a horrid dream, or rather, the worst of nightmares; for to accept this reality without doubt would be to submit to death.

_I stopped at the end of the hallway in front of a heavy oak door. My breathing was normal but I could not slow my rapidly beating heart. I was aware of nothing more then the cold metal against the hot skin of my side. Slowly, only to make sure no noise was made, I was sure of my decision; I opened the door and slipped inside. The sleeping form on the bed remained undisturbed, its chest rising and falling evenly with deep sleep. Suddenly the boy rolled over, his open eyes staring right at me….._

My eyes shot openand I took in the empty walls of my room. I let out a gust of air sat up slowly, turned and sat hunched over the side of my bed with my head in my hands, massaging my head against the intense ache that was causing it to throb.

"18," I whispered to myself with the slightest hint of awe, then with sarcasm "Happy Birthday." This display of emotion, no matter how slight, was some thing I would only although in the complete solitude of my room.

'Three and a half years. I have been here for three and a half years,' I cemented the fact in my mind. With a sigh I got up and started getting ready for my day, THE DAY. As I did, I reflected on my time at the orphanage, specifically the last two years, since I found out Victor was dead:

That day was the last of my life, my old life. I entered the numbness again and I am sure I will never break free, for this time it was different than before. It is not an absence; I am not gone from this world as I was before. I am not in shock and denial. This time my "numbness" is a result of acceptance. It is a state all human beings should live their life in. I was, and still am, aware of all the pain, of how the lose affected me; of the crushing sadness, and later the fire of rage.

And I accepted it, felt it, and ignored it.

From that day forth I let nothing affect me, never was there even a ripple of disturbance in my calm, serene, perhaps dull demeanor. While a torrent of complex emotions constantly ravaged through my insides in my outward conduct I was lifeless, the _living dead_. When I finished reading the letter I had folded it up neatly, put it in my pocket, and walked calmly back to my seat. That was how it started.

In those first years at the orphanage, when I thought Victor was still alive, I did not hold much interest for any of my companions, but I interacted with them fair amount. I could have a casual conversation at lunch with some "buds" or participate in some pick up sports game in the free hours of the afternoon willingly with at least a small amount of sincere enjoyment in those pointless activities.

That was something that changed. I did not ignore those who tried to talk to me after, but neither did I do anything to entice the conversation. My favorite response was a shrug or a simple raise of the eyes that signified "I heard you, I just don't care, don't say it again." First the others stopped asking me to join in their activities; then one by one they stopped talking to me all together. I didn't mind, it was easier to keep up my charade that way. I attended my classes without missing a day, but put in no more or less effort than was absolutely necessary. If it were not for those rare times when the professor would call on me in class I might have forgotten the sound of my own voice completely.

The headmaster had not been so easy to shake off. He was a good man, genuinely interested in the lives and wellbeing of the boys in his institutions. Once a month, about, I would come about in the rotation to spend a couple hours in his office, talking about this or that, that was the idea any way. He seemed to have a special interest in me and our time together, perhaps because I was more troubled then any of the others and that was interesting, or because he'd been a part of the situation that put me here, or simply because he wanted to help, and though I would not admit it, I needed it worst of all. Whatever the reason he had a deep determination to get me to open up in those sessions. He would pick and nab question after question, and the sessions dragged, and soon enough he accepted that I was a locked door; even the most persistent, if they are intelligent, realize when there is no hope for something.

We still had the sessions now but they were different, practically scripted and it was never expected that I speak.

I would knock on the door three times when his voice would call, "come in." His office featured an array of ornate wood work with a square desk in the middle filled with neatly stacked papers. There was a plush rug on the floor and to the left there was a large stone fire place that always crackled with a lively fire on these days. By the fireplace there were two arm chairs. I suspected the room would very warm and comforting, to those who were susceptible to that kind of thing.

Anyway moving on, I would enter and he would be sitting in the chair on the right side of the fire place. I would walk and stand before and he would greet me, "Hello Ernest."

I would simply nod and then take the other chair to which he gestured. With a sigh he would reach up and take our current book from the mantle, or if it was a day for a new one he would get up and walk up and down the book shelf that covered the back wall until he found one that particularly appealed to him. Then he would read aloud, for several hours at least. In the beginning I think the stories he picked were meant to inspire me. They all told different versions of a tale where the main characters would have troubles in his life galore, but in the end in a miraculous turn of events everything would wind up okay. Then later he moved to classical pieces of artistic literature and enlightening works of scholars. Now he read the darker pieces of those who, like myself, cast the world in shadow. I could see his reasoning, perhaps a mirror would work where hope and elegance and intelligence had not.

But it was still all the same to me. Sometimes I would listen, and others I let my mind wander as I watched the fire slowly consume its food. Light, life, energy, darkness destruction, death, in the end it was all the same.

When he would finish for the day he would put would put down the book and we would both sit in silence for a few moments. Then he would take in a deep breath and breathe it out "Well then, how 'bout that?"

I would raise my eyes from the fire to meet his steady cause but never did I say a word. I watched his face fall ever so slightly as his slight hope failed him every time.

In truth if I were to admit to the depths of my feelings I would have to allow that disappointing the kind man hurt me. He was a good man, I revered and cared for him. But such affection was against the rules I now lived by, and its expression would not be tolerated. So, I would hold my gaze steady while he tried to pierce my cold exterior his. Finally, after and immeasurable moment he would get up, come over, and place his hands on either of my shoulders.

"Well, Ernest, my boy, I think we are done then, unless there is something, anything, you wish you discuss?"

I wonder if he would have changed his wording if I would have opened up; for there was definitely nothing I _wanted_ to discuss, but there was certainly much I _needed_ to. Yes, I wonder, but I doubt it. It would have been like being trapped in an inescapable room, and someone on the outside trying to help you out, and then they suddenly have a shovel, only to but the ground is pure granite rock; the impossible has only become slightly less hopeless.

Anyway, I would stand up, every time, stand before him for a moment, then walk out of the room without a word.

Overall I lived for nothing but to not not exist, and I made it so that nothing and no one would, or could, live for me. After about a year this way I had a great revelation.

I had experienced no more loss, no extremes of pain and grief. No dramatic change had shaken my world. Every time before when I had thought all that I could lose had been taken from me, I was struck again, in a way I had not thought of, prepared for, or imagined possible. Now I had not simply accepted what I thought was nothing, but pushed everything away, so that I had less than that; and I had succeeded.

You must have nothing, so nothing can be taken from you. It was my new philosophy and I followed it like the obsessive subject of a dark religion.

Almost immediately after I came to this conclusion, as if the world were trying to test the strength of my tie to it, Leo came to the orphanage.

Leopald Francais Cogsworth was a remarkable specimen of a boy. He was handsome and friendly, well behaved and cheerful. He had an intense work ethic, always stood for what was right, and was very responsible. He was 17 when he came to the Geneva Home for Orphaned boys after both his parents were lost to same unknown disease.

Leo, as he preferred to be called, was off the kind that people were automatically drawn to. He charmed the teachers and enchanted his companions. He had an air of light about him, an atmosphere of untainted hope which intoxicated all those who for so long had been living in the same boat of misfortune. He had suffered as much as most of us, but from some glowing spirit within he seemed to draw strength to not just merely carry on, but to be truly happy.

He was one of a kind, and he was too good for this harsh world. He could have had anyone he desired as his friend, the popular, the athletic, the smart, but he chose me, the social reject; it was his one screw up he couldn't charm his way out of.

I tried to ignore him at first as I did with all the others, but he would not be deterred. When I would not speak would carry on the conversation, pausing at points to look at me, then. as if I had said something he would let out a joyful laugh and pronounce "Of course," then continue on as if my non-existent input had inspired him with a new topic.

In spite of myself I found I enjoyed listening to him. Soon I didn't care that my face displayed my interest and emotions. Once I even laughed with him.

At first it was quite comical; I believe I frightened him for a moment as that sound so unfamiliar to me, then and now, choked its way up my throat to make a noise that sounded somewhat similar to an animal being strangled. But soon he realized what it was supposed to be and the greatest joy became upon his face and a triumphant smile spread across as his face.

His laugh, like a choir of angels so melodic it was, rang out pure across the fields behind the orphanage. And the sun which shone behind him seemed to make him glow and reflected over his golden tinted hair to make the appearance of a halo, and suddenly before was a glorious sight, a fallen angel.

So I laughed hard and long, because I wanted to relish that sight. I laughed because this once I could, and the more I did the more recognizable a sound it became and memories of happier times flooded back to me. But mainly I laughed, because I did not want to cry, because I had cried so much and I didn't want to anymore.

I had realized several things in Leo's joy. He was an angel, fallen to test me, to show me the truth, to cement into my life that theory which I had so proudly proclaimed at first, and now scorned, what I would have given to be wrong.

In Leo's laugh and mine I saw every joyous time I'd shared with my family, only to have it ripped away. In his shining appearance I saw someone too good for this world, and would be taken from it harshly and unjustly, only after the cruel world had found a way to shatter his irrepressible spirit. In my laugh I saw the truth, the deception needed to do what is right since most have not made the revelation I have. I realized that Leo would die, and I could either let it happen so that the world corrupted him and the end caused yet another loss to me, or I could do it.

I could control everything. I could send him back to heaven where he belonged and I could thwart the pain that loomed to attack me on the horizon. I would remove the problem before it could become one; and it would not hurt if I were to do it because I knew it was right, this was justified, because I loved him.

That was why I laughed; I was going to kill Leopald Francais Cogsworth, my only friend in the world.

I wasted no time once I knew my task. That night at dinner I snuck a large meat cleaver from the kitchen. The only one who noticed my absence was Leo, and he swallowed easily my bathroom lie; in his innocence and my deception I saw again the beauty of my plan, it was like the black night swallowing the light of the day…natural.

I laid awake in my bed until I presumed it to be midnight. I rose without a sound slipped out my door soundlessly and made my way down the chilly corridor with its marble floor and stone walls.

I stopped at the end of the hallway in front of a heavy oak door. My breathing was normal but I could not slow my rapidly beating heart. I was aware of nothing more then the cold metal against the hot skin of my side. Slowly, only to make sure no noise was made, I was sure of my decision; I opened the door and slipped inside. The sleeping form on the bed remained undisturbed, its chest rising and falling evenly with deep sleep. Suddenly the boy rolled over, his open eyes staring right at me…..

I froze dead in my tracks; waiting for him to do something, anything, perhaps inquire why I was in his room at this hour of night.

But nothing happened; his breath kept coming and going the same way. He was not awake; he slept with his eyes open. Of course! If this was my test why should it not be as difficult as possible? Why would it not be that I would have to look into his eyes and watch his light leave the world? I proceeded to his bedside and took the knife from my side and roamed over his body for my spot. Finally, my hand hesitated with the knife hovering right over his heart. I was not cruel; I would make it fast; I only wished he would not have to suffer at all.

I looked into his clear, pure eyes for a long moment, and then, with a sigh, used my other hand to put a sheet over his face.

I was not a coward; I would have gladly held his gaze through the event. But I was not strong enough to kill him fast enough where he would not have a chance to see me, and he would not be able to understand. I was doing this so that he may not know the corruption of the world; what sense would it make for him to die in the presence of what he would have believed to be betrayal, wrongly so true, but to be understood.

Sometimes when one does what they know is right for someone else when they don't they say "I'm sorry" but I wasn't.

And so I thrust the blade home in his sacred heart, muffled the half scream he let out with the sheet, and held it there until his thrashing stopped. I did not have to wait long. I used the extra sheet I had covered his face with to wrap his chest and ease the pooling of blood onto his bed.

Then I placed the blankets back over his still form, tucking him in like a sleeping child. I looked to his face. It was frozen in surprise and shock, but there was no terror, fear or pain; I smiled slightly to myself, I had done well.

I turned his head so that his neck, which had been at an awkward angle, rested his head neatly on his pillow. I closed his eyes, shut his mouth and stroked his soft hair, so easily could he have been sleeping.

I leaned down and whispered, "Your welcome," in his ear, then turned, and walked away.

Leo's "murder" caused quite a stir at the orphanage, but of course there was no way to figure out who was to blame, "because no one was" I thought to myself, "it was nature's course."

To the surprise of many I did speak at his funeral, I felt I owed him that much. It was he who had proceeded my final understanding, and for me that he had ever had to endure this cruel world, so far from the paradise where he belonged.

My reflections came to a close I straightened my tie, otherwise all ready for the day, and the sun had taken a fair position in the sky. I doubt any of the other students were up, seeing as it was Saturday and we had no classes, but I suspected the headmaster would be hustling about in his corridors, preparing for another day. In fact, more than doubt and suspect, these were things I was confident of and counted on. I took the pack, which held my few possessions, from over the chair and slipped it over my slim shoulders. Then I strolled leisurely through the courtyards to the main building, went inside, and knocked on the headmaster's door as I had so many times before.

"Come in," he invited.

I stepped into the familiar room and saw him sitting in a chair by the fireplace, drinking a cup of tea, perfect.

He glanced over as the door opened and jumped up quickly in surprise when he saw that it was me.

"Ernest, my boy, what an unexpected visit! Welcome, of course, but so early, is there something you need?" He gleamed at me intrigued by this break of rigid routine. When I had spoken at Leo's funeral, elaborately and willingly, it had rekindled his hope to unravel me, as though he had been given a loose string to pull, but it had quickly been dosed back down as I went back to my silent self the moment I stepped down from the grave. Today, with this break of pattern the process began again, but of all days today I would not disappointed the kind, good man. I would give him everything he desired. That is the only way it worked.

And so in a way that made all the muscles there sore I pulled my face into a convincing smile and greeted him, "Good Morning Headmaster, I am sorry to bother you so early, of course, but I did have need to speak with you. You see, today is my 18th birthday…"

His face beamed; tangible waves of joy rolled of him as I spoke. Then he interrupted me with a chortle, "Of course it is dear Ernie, and congratulations may I add you'll make a fine young man indeed. But did you think I forgot? Oh, no, no, you merely beat me to the punch! I had no idea you were such and early riser; tis a good quality though. Wait here just a moment."

I let him prattle, nodding and smiling accordingly, then waited obediently and contently. I took advantage of his absence and situated my self in the chair opposing the one he had left. I poured myself a cup of the tea and _refresh_ed his. He returned to the office from his inner chambers after a few short chambers with a small box in hand.

He saw me and the steaming cups by the fireplace, and sighed happily as he took his earlier position. He leaned over and placed the box on my knee, "There now, take a look see in there." He leaned back and sipped his tea.

This was unexpected, I looked down nervously at the box; he owed me nothing. "Sure, really no, you shou---" I tried to say, but he wouldn't have it.

"Now, I have quite enjoyed watching you grow, I will admit that I have a special fondness for you and hope you will indulge me in this. It is not everyday a boy becomes a man!"

It wasn't right. This was a day where I should do no receiving, but I should also give him everything he wants. Of course he would want to give me something. I reached took hold of the box, and opened it. Inside there was a fine silver pocket watch and chain. Quite fancy and distinguished it was the kind you might find in the pocket of a wealthy man. It cost a pretty penny I'm sure, but for all that it was trivial, it was no more than a watch, silver or any common metal, it worked just the same.

"Nice, isn't?"

"Yes sir, thank you, I am quite humbled, it is more than I deserve." I said, conventionally but with real meaning. I placed it in my bag which I had rested at my feet, trivial as it was it would be a nice memoir.

The headmaster noticed now for the first time that I had all my belongings with me and his eyes, which had followed my hands to my bag, flashed to my face. "Are you going somewhere Ernest?" he asked with slight shock.

"Actually, yes professor. That's what I came here this morning to talk about. As I am 18 now I am no longer required to stay at the orphanage. Don't get me wrong, I hold nothing against it, for it is a fine institution and you a good man, but I feel I need to expand my horizons. My spirit yearns to see the world and now that that dream is in reach I cannot wait another day. I come here today to say goodbye, and hopefully receive your blessings on my journeys." These lies rolled easily off the tongue, for although I know he would have most preferred I stay in his company, such words would be much more comforting then the truth.

As I had spoke his shock had turned to enthusiasm, and he practically bounded out of his seat. I rose with him, albeit much slower. He took my hand in his in the formal handshake and then pulled me close so that he might put his other arm around my shoulder and we walked to the door.

"Of course, of course my boy, my blessings and encouragements to you. You were always so smart I should have expected you couldn't be cooped up in a little old orphanage in the countryside of Switzerland. Of course! Go, go, have adventures, explore!" We reached the door and he turned to face me, "And may perhaps one day you could find the time to stop back and share your experiences with your old fat professor from that inconsequential little orphanage?" he offered.

I smiled widely at him, "Of course." That lie was even easier; I had felt the cold sweat on his hand. Soon nothing I had just said to this man would make a difference.

As the door closed behind me I could hear him coughing within. I felt the empty the empty vile in my left coat pocket; he would be dead before I reached the street.

When I stepped out of the main building into the open air I could smell spring in the air. The lingering banks of snow from the winter receded more each day. There was no item in my pack that weighed any significant amount in its own right, nor in contrast to another; yet as I walked the cobble path from the front steps to the street two items in there seemed to me to have an incredible pull.

First there was the silver watch, ticking away quietly somewhere in the bottom.

Then there was a mere piece of paper, yellowing and folded with wrinkles galore, crumbling at the edges. It was the real reason I had decided to leave. The letter was from a sir _Robert Walton._

I reached the end of the path and stepped through the wrought iron archway, but turned to look back before I proceeded down the street.

I stared at the orphanage from the street side of the fence for a long moment in the light of the early morning and whispered in an air of awe and triumph…

"I am out."


	3. 2 End

Despite the emotionless philosophy I'd adopted, I can not deny that since the day I received the letter informing me of Victor's death, I had an intense curiosity to know what had possessed him in the last years of his life, how it led to his death, and how Robert Walton fit in to all of it. Tracking down Walton was sure to give at least some answers, so I made from the orphanage with that goal in mind and determination in my step.

The problem was not where to go but how to get there. With the letter's address I knew I was headed to England, but alas I had no money. The journey was long, and engaged me in days of walking on end, with little food and in tumultuous weather. There were short stretches I would travel with the aid of others, in the back of a wagon, or earn my passage on a ship by working the engine, but most of my first months outside of the orphanage I spent in solitude, and to be honest I preferred it that way. Just me, the road and nature.

Victor always spoke like that, how nature consoled him and gave him such joy; I never understood it till then. As I passed through different countries and landscapes the new and abundant glorious sights were unearthed to me. Tall mountains and low grassy fields, steely smooth glass lakes and waves crashing on the coast, the brass sun high in the sky at midday, and the serene moon tenderly heeding its concern for the night and its shadows, they all astounded me. Nature couldn't be disturbed, couldn't be broken or contained, it lead it own path, as I now did mine. Even the weather spoke to me, warm sunny days were best for traveling yet I felt reborn when the rain fell in thick sheets, less alone when thunder boomed across the skies, and invigorated to new life when lightning struck from the heavens.

All the while that pocket watched ticked in my bag. Its sound, to me, became a haunted melody that followed me everywhere, even in my dreams. It was so unrelenting, and in deranged outbursts I would nearly smash it to pieces, insane with the idea that it was asking, no demanding, something of me. And yet in my sleep I was haunted with nightmares where it did cease to tick, where hence I suddenly became very disoriented and lost, grasping at nothing, to wake in a terrible chill, only to have the watch be sitting, in perfect working condition, in my pack only inches from my head. I developed and acute hearing for it, where it mostly faded into the background but I could always sense it, somewhat like the beating of one's own heart. And I had the strange sense that the two were connected; that my heart would only beat as long as hands on that pocket watch went round and round, perhaps that's where the nightmares came from.

It was nearly June when I stepped from a ship onto the shore of England, the trip at sea had seen little rain, and as a deck hand I had spent long hours in the sweltering sun. As I caught sight of clouds to the north, glanced down the cobble stone street that went on beyond my view, and observed people going about their business, their was an atmosphere different from what I was used to in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on; there was a sudden very unusual swell of emotion within me as I proclaimed quietly to myself, "I like England."

A small charmingly dingy looking pub at the end on one corner caught my eye. Through the window I could see an array of cheerful people, with broad grins and twinkling eyes, sipping their drinks and swaying or bobbing slightly to the moderate folk music that could be heard projecting from the place. Inside a beautiful young woman with a long braid was making her way through the crowd and picking up drinks. As the song changed there was an uproar as everyone clapped and hollered, all eyes turning to the girl. She blushed and looked down but let herself be pushed to the center of the floor when where she gracefully began an intricate dance, the others slowly falling in.

Smiling slightly to myself, half conscious, half in a trance, I began to make my way towards the building, not quite with consent from my brain, but also not unwilling.

I was stopped short as the ticking of that silver pocket watch broke through the background o my brain. This time, as every time, it not only reminded me of its presence, but that of the letter from Robert Walton, which suddenly felt like a dead weight hanging from my shoulder. I was here for reason, not some pointless activities like drinking and dancing at….I glanced up and let rough laugh, "_The Renaissance Tavern."_ I turned swiftly, bitterly and began walking the other way.

Robert Walton was not far now, and with him in grasp so were the answers to all my questions I have pondered far too long now. I would not be distracted again.

The house was an old brownstone; clean sharp edges with classical architecture to dress up its basic, but sturdy, frame. It was the kind of house inside which you would find overstuffed armchairs and sofas with countless unnecessary plush pillows, the kind of house that was probably full of useless knickknacks and meaningless trophies. It made me sick.

I knew it was unreasonable to hate the Sir Robert Walton who lived there, whoever he was. He could have been a perfectly decent man, and it of course wasn't his fault for my brother's death. And yet my entire being despised him for sending me the letter that tore my life apart. His house, obviously displaying value for meaningless material possessions and a lifestyle ignorant of the cruel, suffering world, did not help his case.

Sighing at the task before me, having a conversation with another human being, I made my way slowly up the stairs and knocked on the heavy oak door. As I waited I glanced over at the horizon where the sun was slipping under. Darkness would turn over on the area by the end of the next hour.

The door cracked open and a confused looking servant appeared. "Good evening, sir, can I help you?"

I turned back to him and tried to put a charming note in my voice. "Yes, I would like to speak with Sir Robert Walton, please."

The man gave me a questioning look, "Is he expecting you?"

"NO, but I'm sure he would see me if you let him know, my name is Ernest Frankenstein, Victor was my brother."

"Okay," the man gave a doubtful look but said, "just a moment," and went back into the house.

Not twenty seconds later the door sung open vigorously to display a very different man. He was middle aged, grays beginning to speckle his head. He wore a fine brown suit that seemed a bit stressed around his middle. I could just see him, before his servant disturbed him with my presence, lounging and reading some book, not a care in the world. His face was shocked, incredulous; astonished with a mixture of horror and excitement.

"Ernest...dear boy…well I must say this is a much unexpected visit…Well com in, I'm sure you've traveled far. Yes com in, Ernest my boy, may I call you Ernest?"

He was clearly shocked to his wit's end, but trying to be polite. In effort to calm him I put on the most assuring smile I could muster, "Ernie, please, sir," I said in a shy voice bowing my head in respect.

I worked; he smiled warmly at me and pulled me in the house after him. "Can I get you something, anything?"

I had no desire to indulge in his little treats. "I'm sure I'd enjoy anything you do."

"Very well," he claimed turning to his servant, "Charles, could you please get us a bottle of my finest wine and some crab cakes?" Then, turning back to me, he continued, "I love crab cakes! Always keep the makings in the house, have had stuff shipped in form ports all over the world."

Sighing as we sat down in his sitting room, just as plush as I imagined, he looked me straight in the eye and became very somber. "I can see your brother in you quite clearly, that's why you're here, isn't it? You want to know what happened, the whole story?"

"Yes, sir." It was all I could manage; I never imagined he would be so forward. My insides burned with delight and yearning to know how close I was to the truth, to uncovering the mystery of my late brother's dementia. I felt as though I was on the threshold of having all my answers, and countless discoveries I could not even imagine.

"It is not a pleasant story, nor a trip a like let my mind return to or linger on. You might do better to just believe that your brother died peacefully in his sleep from an unfortunate, but _natural_, illness; it's true enough."

"I am not a child, Sir Walton! I was barely one when he left, and even so I could recognize that something haunted him, something dark, something _unnatural;_ He kept something from all of us, and I want to know the truth!" Upset at this backward step I had forgotten myself. Quickly I let my features become abashed and I slunk back down into the chair from which I'd sprung to continue in a remorseful voice. "I'm sorry sir, I just, need to know, please sir, I have nothing, I'm all alone, I just want to understand what it was that caused my family to become extinguished around me….please." I whispered sending the act home while I said that last word by lifting my head slightly to look up at him through the hair that hung in face. "Please?"

He frowned sadly at me, pitying me; it took all my strength no to lunge at him. "Yes of course, you've been through so much; you deserve, at least, the truth." Then he took a deep breath and began. "Your brother was a brilliant young man, very ambitious in his goals………."

For the next several hours I listened in horror, shock and awe. As Walton had warned me it was not a pleasant story and I scarcely look back on the day. Of course that does not make me forget it. I am confident that if I tried I could remember every word that was spoken that afternoon; How my brother with dreams of great scientific achievement, in innocent pursuit of knowledge, had created the monster which killed first my young brother, then the rest of my family, how he had almost created another such abomination to sedate the beast, and finally how unable to take his terrorism anymore my brother had chased "the Creature" across land and ice until death finally took him. Hour by hour I listened to him unravel the events of my brother and his creature's disease. I did not interrupt, comment, gasp, cry; I was perfectly stoic, as if there were a clear glass wall between him and me. However, on the inside, beneath years of suppressing everything, a war was waging as I took everything in.

Finally, just as the clock rang its last stroke announcing the middle of the night, Walton came to the closing of his retelling. "Shortly after Victor's death I met his 'monster'. Your brother asked me to do everything in my power to make sure I bring an end to him once he was gone," he said looking abashed, "but I must admit that on that encounter I did no such thing and have neither seen nor heard of him since, nor tried. You must hate me, I understand, but please let me finish," he exclaimed raising his arms in defense despite the fact that I had not moved a muscle. "When I first saw him standing over your brother's body, yes, that's where I found him, I had every intention of carrying out the deed but I just wanted to speak with him. He was a deplorable being for everything he did assuredly, but he was also one of a kind, interesting, and unknown; I was young and curious. He was not the creature I was expecting, it seemed the death of his creator and enemy had destroyed all his fury. He simply cried over his body and kept apologizing. I reprimand him, ridiculed his "I'm sorry's" when he was the reason for his death. Still, although I assure I felt no compassion but only disgust for him I was no longer tempted or in any way inclined to call in my men for help killing him. He was a pitiful, miserable creature and neither then nor now do I find it hard to believe that when he said he was going to take his own life in the farthest north as soon as he left the ship he was sincere. I relay to you that I believe with my entire heart that the Creature is dead. Also, reflecting on your brother's story I find it very apparent that revenge is quite self-destructive. I hope you see that too," he finished leaning forward to put his hand on my shoulder.

"Yes, of course," I told him standing up. "Well thank you Sir Walton, I believe that's everything I needed to know, excuse me for remaining at your house so long. I shall promptly withdraw my presence and leave you to yourself, Goodnight Sir."

I began to exit the room but he grasped my elbow, spinning me back around to face him. "Surely you can't be leaving! Dear boy! You can not be emotionally stable right now, don't you want to talk? Plus, it's the middle of the night any way, where are you going to go? I insist you stay."

I sighed, slipping out of his grasp and explaining, "Sir, it's really fine. I knew my brother's story was serious and dramatic, that's not exactly what I was expecting but it's not that shocking either. I have a room in town and I really can impose myself on you no longer." Quickly I slipped out the door, running again from my lies, leaving him staring after me before he could say another word.

As I reached the end of the dirt path that led up to the house drops of rain began to fall softly from the sky. I took no notice as I turned onto the deserted main road, but not back towards town; I turned to start walking the other direction, to no where, north.

Like the night Victor left, the sprinkle was quickly turning into a down pour and my legs seemed to take on a mind of their own, going faster and faster until I was running, sprinting down the empty lane. My breath came out in strangled gasps interrupted by broken sobs as the war within me broke to the surface for the first time in many, many years.

But they were not tears of sadness, for Victor or any of my other family members who had met a tragic end. I was angry and frustrated but not sad. I was confused because it was not the Creature I was angry at. It was Victor, he, on his own accord, had messed with the natural balance of things and brought a consuming horror into all of our lives, without the courage to tell us so. I did not feel compassion for the Creature in any way, but neither did I hate him. I knew from experience that one did not have to be so evil to kill, just hurt. He was nothing to me but the spawn of my own brother's arrogance. Foolish wretch! Why couldn't he see that we were perfectly happy in ignorance, death was nothing to fear! It was the only escape from a world with so many horrors that you must be ignorant, like dear Leo, or miserable. Why must he have brought the latter into our lives so abruptly and rashly? And how could he have left me all alone to face such a cruel world while he went off to escape by death with all the others? Why on earth was I still here!

All my way to Walton's house I was obsessed with finding my answers, I never thought about what I would do after. As it turned out there had been no need to. My brother's story running through my mind like lightning I suddenly stopped in the middle of that abandoned road going nowhere and let the pelting rain soak me to the bone as a great awareness dawned on me. There was no answer to my last question; there was no reason for me to be here. The events and catastrophes that had taken place in Victor's life and the lives of those close to him had no place here, such an atrocious happening could not be allowed to exist in a planet already so full of doom.

That was why after learning about Victor's death I was not sad. Like Leo's it was necessary, all traces and parts having to doing with his horrific and unnatural event had to be destroyed. It was also why I was not angry at the Creature, it seems to me that on some level, while leading Victor to his death and then committing to his own, that he also realized this. It was why all my family had had to die. It was why my life had to end, as soon as possible.

I was suddenly overcome with this undoubtedly right fact. It was the only way this curse could be lifted from the world. I was the last piece, the only loose end to be tied up. Without knowing why I had turned north on the road I was standing on now, and so I would continue. This massacre, this calamity, this evil thing would end in the desolate north where my brother and his creature had, where no man would ever venture so the world would finally be rid of it.

However, as plans started unraveling in my mind my breath caught as I made another realization and I did not continue northward but turned around and began heading back towards the house of Sir Robert Walton. There was another loose end. He said he didn't like to revisit the run in with my brother, but if he blabbed the story to just one person before his death, it would never die. So I walked briskly back towards the fine house, knowing the knife I'd killed Leo with was one of those few possessions in my bag. I'd kept it as a reminder that life is cruel, as if I'd ever forget! Sir Robert Walton may have valued foolish things, but he was not an awful man, nor ignorant and in need of freedom. He just was so unfortunate as to be caught up in these terrible events, so there was no choice. I had to kill him.

So, following in my foot steps back towards the house I let out a heavy sigh and said my conviction aloud softly.

"If it's the last thing I do I will bring this tragedy to an end."


	4. 3 Remains

In my distress I'd ran father from the house than I'd realized. I walked back, slowly, planning, and stood outside the old brownstone once more in the very early hours of the morning. I suspected that the sun would break the horizon once again in one or two hours, I had to be done and gone by then. Not of course because dark deeds can only occur in the dark; no, people who fear the night were foolish. If they had experienced the world as I had they would know that evil persists everywhere at all times, it does not cower from the light as so many innocent people would like to believe. Still, let them believe, let them be happy and naïve as long as it would be allowed.

I chose the night, this night for a different reason. The men who manned the boats that came to the harbor back at town would arrive with the dawning sun and I wanted to get moving as soon as possible. I had no reason or desire to remain here now that I knew the next step in the dreadful journey that was my life. Plus the darkness reflected my dark soul, which although I believed to be have been extinguished long ago still seemed to grow darker with each passing day.

I walked all the way around the house, but it was completely dark. I'd suspected that Sir Walton and his servant would go to sleep soon after I left, my visit a mere insignificant, non-troubling blip in their plush lives. However, I thought maybe, or perhaps even hoped that I would have made some impression on the man my brother had spent his last days with, at least enough to keep him up for a couple of hours, reading, writing in journal, or thinking deeply by the light of a candle in his room; but as it was that was not the case and I had no idea where Walton was sleeping peacefully away in the large house, so it would be senseless to spare the extra effort to enter through a window.

"The front door then," I sighed, "how traditional."

I entered the house with little delay, finding it unlocked. I stood silently in the lavish entry hall, among the countless shadows cast by all the little trinkets and trophies there, not sure which way to go. The stale air of the nearly empty house felt suffocating; the silence was deafening. I had gotten no better at this. My heart pounded as fast and hard as it had with Leo, and I could feel the cold sweat slide down the back of my neck to my jacket, still damp from the rain. With a shallow, ragged breath I stepped forward down the hall, my knife, grasped tightly in my trembling hand, casting a long shadow all the way down the hall behind me.

At the end of the hall way I turned left and after a bit of wandering found a staircase, which I proceeded to climb with all the stealth I could muster. It was pitch black but my eyes were slowly getting used to it so I could see the outline of the door ways down either side of the hall. I walked down peering inside each to no avail, while the portraits on the walls, generations of Waltons, stared blankly after me.

Sometime along that immeasurable search I stopped and turned to look at one, leaning close so I could see the painting clearly. The man was middle-aged, some where in his forties I would guess but couldn't be sure. He had a full round face that somehow managed to still not be plump. It appeared his hair had been a dark, almost black, brown in his younger years but was now mixed with a fair amount of gray. I could see little of his suit, but it seemed to have all the works of any fine gentleman's, pure black and pressed to the trim, buttons done up and finished with a burgundy, what I presumed to be silk, undershirt. There was even a gold chain, the kind passed down from father to son as sort of a family heirloom, strung across his coat pocket. But all this is not what made my eyes linger on his picture. It was the expression on his face. As I first looked at it I could see that he was holding a slight grin, one that made him look over me, over every one, that made him superior, because he knew something, a secret, and that gave him some sense of righteous.

I sneered darkly at the picture when suddenly it transformed before by eyes, although not literally of course. The superiority was gone, although his grin had not moved, but the gleam of a secret in his eyes became filled with sadness, glossy with tears, it was a look of pity; and _those_ eyes bore straight into me. I cold shiver ran down my back and my entire body. And although the house was still, of course, silent, with not even the wind howling outside, I swore I heard him whisper.

"It's okay Ernest, don't do it. This isn't who you have to be. Don't t-----" I shut my eyes tight and sank down to the floor, turning my back to the portrait and leaning up against the wall as my whole body trembled violently. I sat there for some amount of time, no less or more than it took to block out his face….and those words…..and after a couple of minutes, or near and hour, I'm not sure, I stood up and continued down the hallway, keeping my eyes straight ahead.

Finally, I pushed open one of the doors to glance in on a sleeping form and silently slipped inside. Feeling the pressure of the time I'd wasted in the hall I walked briskly over to the bedside and began to raise my knife when suddenly he stirred.

I hid the knife behind my back quicker than I could think and stood frozen as he turned over and opened his eyes. He gave a slight jump and a small exclamation of fright, then hurriedly sat up and lit a candle at his bedside.

"Oh dear Ernie, you gave me a start! What on earth are you doing at this hour?" he asked without seeming to care for an answer but stared at me for a long moment where emotions paced over his face I could not comprehend. He grimaced slightly, and then his face melted into that comforting pity one I could not stand.

"I suspected you'd be back, need a place to recuperate after such an ordeal as that story, but I thought it best not to argue and let you sort through such matters." He sighed, "Perhaps we should make some tea before I show you to a room, warm the insides, it appears you walked through that rainstorm.

He sighed deeply as he stood up with a small smile on his face to pat my shoulder gently, "No need to add sickness to sorrow." Then he looked into my eyes and took out a handkerchief and placed it in my knifeless hand and said, "There, there now, it will be okay…."

Suddenly the world was moving very slowly I could seem to take in what was being said, it didn't make any sense. Unlike the headmaster who had uttered such words of comfort when I, at least thought, I didn't need them, Sir Robert Walton was uttering them too late. What puzzled me was why, he had no way of knowing the tears I had let loose miles up the road. "…wipe those tears away and…"

The world was growing blurry as I tried to comprehend what would make him say such a thing. How could he have known I cried and what good would a handkerchief do now, when the rain had washed them away; did he expect me to dry the rain of with that little peace of cloth? As these thoughts went through my head, thick and slow, I remained absolutely still, still unable to move even a muscle as Walton looked on. Finally he took the handkerchief back, whispering "Very well then," as he dabbed the white fabric softly on my left cheek right under my eye.

As my brain still refused to let my body move I realized the world was becoming clearer, less blurry. I felt, in an overwhelming realization, how the cloth was soaking up the wetness where he dabbed it so I could suddenly feel the hot tears that were still rolling down the other side of my face.

And I could feel the dried on ones from crying all after noon, since the first drop had crept out with the mention of my brother, carving pale lines into my face. I remembered what I tried so hard and succeeded in blocking out by telling myself it didn't affect me, that I was in control. I could see the tears blur my vision enough for me to have to reach for the door handle a second time before I left the headmaster's office. I could feel how the hot saltwater on face contrasted with the cold knife against my side as I walked to Leo's room, and I could hear the sobs ripping themselves up and out of me as a plunged the knife into him. I could feel another peace of cloth in my pocket, the same size as the one Sir Walton was dabbing on my face, but navy blue with a white border stitched in, and I remembered for the first time how Leo had placed it into my hand when he sat down at my empty table in the corner for the first time.

As I stared off into these memories Walton finished and drew his hand back and looked at me curiously, probably because I still had not moved. "Ernest, are you al-----"

But Sir Robert Walton never got to finish asking me if I was all right, a question I'm sure you know the answer to, because right at that moment without thinking, but not without passion, a brought my knife back around and slashed him swiftly and deep across the throat.

He fell at my feet and without looking down I stepped over his twitching body and over to his bed stand where, as I suspected, there was the gold chain from the portrait that I recalled being slung across his own coat pocket in our discussion earlier that day. I picked it up and slid it in my bag with my few other possessions. I took out that crumbled old letter from the man on the floor and stuck it in the flame of the candle, watching as the flames licked its edges, and dropped it to the ground with a dark smile. Then I turned around, walked over the incendiary carpet that ran throughout the house and out the door.

As the first rays of dawn arrived I found my self in the tavern of the dancing girl, staring out at the horizon as I sipped my drink. When the sunrise was about half over she came over to my table with a sad smile and placed a lace trimmed handkerchief on the table before going through the swinging door in the back. I stared at it for a long time then drew my knife and slammed it down on top in a flash. Then slowly and gently I wrapped my hand around the cloth, around the knife, as if to prepare to clean it, and with a quick, hard move, thrust my hand all the way up the blade; so that the handkerchief did not just wipe off the blood of Sir Walton, but soaked up mine as it leaked from the long deep gash at the top of my palm, just below the fingers. Then I threw it back on the table with a couple coins and left them there with my half full glass.

Outside I took a deep breath of the fresh sea air and let the rising sun shine on my pale face for a moment before setting of briskly for the docks.

Leaning down where I could get to the seas I first dunked my whole head in the freezing water, and then cleaned myself off. When I stood up I could see a sturdy, fair-sized ship at the end of the third dock, and a man sitting against one of the pillars it was tied to, nodding off. Feeling the sack of Walton valuables at my side I made my way towards him.

Everything about and surrounding my family was cursed.

"And I am all that remains."


	5. 4 North

The ship was small enough that I could man it myself but large enough for me to wander about it on the long journey north without becoming restless. I suspect it was not worth what I gave the man for when I emptied the bag, knowing I would have no other need for money once I got the ship, he looked at me incredulously, handed me the rope from the ship, and ran away with it, as though afraid I would change my mind.

I proceeded to stock the ship with food I had purchased earlier and some other supplies, in addition to what was left on it, and was sea bound before the village had woke up in its entirety.

I found the weeks at sea surprisingly refreshing. Completely alone for the first time in my life, there was a certain freedom in not having to try, to be able to put down the act felt as though I had shed a heavy coat. Whether we realize it or not we all carry acts, even those who pride themselves on not being afraid being themselves. You can spend your entire life with a person and not know them as they do, or even at all. Human beings I think are very isolate creatures, and much of the stress and pain in our lives is caused by trying to be interactive. I, at least, had only found hardship down that road and yet even in the most recent days I had found such a path unavoidable. The only way I found myself left alone on the open water was by spending the past months acting as though I was just as complacent with life as everyone else, or at least trying…

Anyway, it was gone now, and so I woke up each dawn and stood on the deck gazing out over the vast ocean for near or over an hour; and I reflected on my miserable life, letting the emotions that came with it break me down and rip me apart. I figured my unaffected demeanor useless now; there was no one around to see me break and bother trying to help, and soon it would all be over. There would be no more trying, so I could stop now, no more suffering, so I would one last time.

And I did, deepest sorrow chilled my soul as I recalled each death, while anger burned from my head to my toes when I thought of how I was left alone, confusion left me dazed as I tried to figure out how I had got to that horrid point on a appalling, inescapable journey.

When I had come to the conclusion that I was going to kill myself after leaving Walton's I had also known immediately that it could be no average suicide. No, if it was going to end the atrocious chain of events there had to be a definite significance to it. For a moment I had considered going to Ingolstadt, but I confess myself too much of a coward. I couldn't bear facing the place where my brother's reckless ambition had given birth to a monster, nor the thought of confronting the professors who would surely recognize me as Victor's brother. So it was apprehension that kept me largely at bay, but I had a practical reason for not making the school my deathbed, the same reason I had resolved on the north.

I had to disappear, not just in my spirit but in my body. I wanted to be completely eliminated. There some teacher or passing student would find my body and surely hold a funeral as civilization calls for us to. There would be mourning I neither wanted nor deserved, tears and remembrance in my name were not only unnecessary, but not allowed.

The forsaken ice covered land of the land offered a place where I would deteriorate away before anyone passed that way again, if ever.

Throughout my voyage I thought on and off about what I would do once I got to the north. It seemed like a continuous process unable to be disconnected one time to the next, but also broken by days and nights. As such I can not say for certain how or when my full plans became complete and concrete in my mind, except for one crucial detail.

I was going to search for remains, of either my brother or the monster, whether it be their actual body or some thing they had carried with them. Although no person of the world I was escaping could be present for my death I felt it necessary to have some symbolic representation of the origins of the problem when it came to and end. I had plenty off supplies to keep me warm so I would take the ship as far as I could, then abandon it and continue on foot.

I knew that there was a good chance that I would freeze to death before I would find anything, but it didn't seem like that would be so bad an option. What I didn't know was the method I would use to end my life if the cold didn't take me. I thought it should be reflective of what I discovered. Perhaps I would find some kind of weapon left behind which could bring my end upon me as violently as so many others'. If it so happened that I stumbled upon the ashes where the Creature said he would burn himself to death I would rekindle the flame and step into it myself. Perhaps if the frozen tundra yielded me nothing I would find a whole in the ice and slip away into the world beneath. Or maybe even I would find something that would give me some fantastic idea I could have never dreamed up on my own. Whatever the case, I found it best to postpone my decision, the last decision of my life, until I could no longer.

The passage to the north was bitter cold. Even right off the coast of England the winds had chilled my bones, but with each passing morning the air nipped at each bit of my exposed skin with new sharpness. Still it was very calming. I quickly adapted to the routine life of a sailor. As I got closer to the North and the sun began to shine all day round I would sit on the deck and stare out blindly over the dark, churning water at that burning sphere for hours on end; letting my mind drift away from the world until my body, on its own accord, took me back below deck to sleep. It was one of these times when I considered abandoning my fatal undertaking for a life at sea, which I enjoyed more each day. But such specific dreams came few and far between, while most evenings I existed in a semi awareness where ideas drifted around in my head without any real presence or permanence. Only when the cold morning winds found their way below deck was I brought back to full consciousness, and often I cursed them.

I ran into only one storm but it ran me for all I was worth. Freezing rain and hail tore apart the sails and pelted me hard enough to leave my skin red and muscles sore in the morning. Thunder shook the skies to add to the viciously rolling sea. Three times I found myself clinging to stay aboard as the waves rose up like ghastly hands with finger's trying to pluck me from the wooden boards and send me to a watery grave. Lightening flashed and lit up the world from the false night that had been created by the dark dense clouds. Each strike threatened to strike down my mast standing tall in the middle of the ocean but each time I was some how escaped that doom. The next couple of days were slow though as I bobbed around aimlessly until I had the sails back in order.

Still the challenge thrilled my long dormant or despairing heart. I think I quite enjoyed the trip, but I can not be certain. I was far to concerned with what lay ahead of me.

The sound of crunching ice woke me. I rose quickly and bundled up before running up to the deck. In front of me was a huge wall of ice, tall glaciers ran to either side as far as I could see, and all around the boat were large unbroken sheets of ice that were thick enough that I could see no sign of water stirring beneath them. I must have reached the beginning of the sheets at some point in the night but there was enough force in the boat to keep it going until now, and now there was no chance of getting out.

Squinting in the glare of the morning light I sighed. I had known this point was coming but I had enjoyed my weeks alone at sea. I had had a taste of a kind of peaceful life I had forgotten was possible, but I knew if I tried to make it last despair would find a crack and leak in. So, with a sigh I went back below deck and began packing up a sled.

Despite the treacherous looking climb I decided to go straight up the glacier in front of me as that was north and I could see no break to turn that way down the ice on either side. I spent that long day making my way step by step and dragging the sled laboriously behind me. I was sweating heavily with the efforts beneath my layers upon layers of clothes but the frigid artic air still brought frostbite to my face and seemed to freeze my bones so that each step was strenuous and painful.

Finally, just a few hours after I stopped for supper, I dragged myself onto the summit, the sled still towing along behind me and stopped. From here I could see that the glacier I stood on made the point of a V formed by the endless ice mountains. Below me another unbroken sheet ice spread out before like and open road; it said to me that I was finally on the right path, a dead end one. As I took a moment to take in the sight before setting off again I was suddenly over whelmed by a sense of déjà vu as a scene, so far from my past it seemed another life, came back to me.

It was a breezy evening in late summer, not long before he first left for Ingolstadt, that Victor asked me to take a walk with him. We talked of things that had been meaningful at the time and others that were trivial even then, but the details more precise than that have slipped from my memory. However, crystal clear in my mind was the view when we stopped on top of a hill to look down on our house and yard and the widespread countryside beyond. Softly rolling fields gave way to larger hills covered in mixed forest of bright green and the red, orange, and yellow colors of the coming autumn, which turned farther on to the dark green of evergreens. The sun was fairly low in the sky, but not yet reaching the horizon, giving us a few more hours of sunlight. I could feel its warmth on my skin in a very comforting way and as I glanced down at the sound of laughter to see Elizabeth playing with Will in the lawn beside the house I smiled. It was at this point in my distant past that Victor spoke the words that swirled around in my head until the coming disasters took precedence.

Looking out at the sight I found wondrous Victor spoke after a long silence. "I will miss it of course but I would be a liar to say I am not filled with excitement to be leaving. Look Ernie! Imagine, just beyond the horizon, what lies there? Just beyond the edges of human knowledge there are huge mysteries for our discovery!" He spoke quickly, his voice filled with a manic excitement I could not understand. "And I am going to! There is so much we can do, we haven't even begun to push our boundaries, but I will. The world is going to be a better place, especially for us. I tell you Ernie, I can see the future now, and it shines brightly on us with favor."

He turned, smiling wide with bright eyes and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. "You have a couple more years of this quiet, albeit pleasant life, but then you'll be out. Of course we will always have our place and responsibilities here, as I trust you'll take my place at father's side while I'm gone, but soon there will be so much more! I see big things for you dear brother, you are going to go places, _see_ things, and change people. I bet you can feel it in you bones, can't you, the world calling for you?"

The truth was I felt no such thing. I'd always known my brother had big dreams that would take him far from home, but I never expected such things of myself, and it shocked me to find that he did. I was the slightest bit saddened by the offhand way he spoke of our home, as though a happy life was too simple to be called an accomplishment. Still as long as I could remember I had revered my brother and trusted him with unconditional faith. If he was so excited by this perhaps I should consider his words to be guiding. So, feeling as though I had suddenly doubled in weight, I smiled back at him and said, "Yes."

We stayed there for a while longer, I gazing intently at the horizon. Shortly before it had seemed merely the edge of a beautiful vista, now, as the world grew darker, the far off line seemed the ominous precipice of an uncertain future. And faith as I had in my brother, hard as I tried, I could not ease the queasy feeling in my stomach, no more than I could make my response to his earnest inquisition true. As we started back down to the house I looked back over the landscape one last time, but it was no use, it would never look the same again. I sighed and followed Victor home.

Now as I stood looking down upon the vast frozen wasteland before me again I felt like I was back on that hill. The desolate north was as empty as that place would feel were I to stand there again and know I would never hear laughter come from below or feel Victor standing beside me. Indeed for all its greenery the sight from that day forth had seemed as lifeless to me as the white tundra. I glanced at the sun in awe for its power, but failed to find its beauty. And I found myself looking out once more with an uneasy feeling about a future that seemed to have been decided for me but with which I could not disagree.

Still my mind had been made up long ago. I briefly considered making camp for the night but quickly realized that to do so would mean I would never get up. So without further ado I set off in the only direction the glaciers on either side now made available.

"North."


	6. 5 Death

The next couple of days I endured more physical pain than I had imagined possible. The cold I had felt on the boat was nothing compared to how it bit at me maliciously out in the open. With every piece of clothing I owned on the artic winds not only easily penetrated them but reached right down deep into my core so I felt frozen from the inside out.

Refusing to take off my mittens even to make a fire I caught my hand on fire three times, only noticing after however it long for the heat to defrost my fingers so I could begin to feel them, if only for a moment as the nerve endings blistered over.

Fires were relentlessly difficult in other way too. In that bitter weather it took forever to get one started and before I could get any food over it the winds would extinguish it. Exasperated and frustrated I ended up eating mostly dried meats and abandoned my attempts at ice fishing altogether.

Whenever I stopped for rest I collapsed as my muscles turned to jelly, screaming in pain, and I was unable to rise again for quite some time, and which point I had to set out again most often. I had always been skinny and bony for a boy. My physical activity had consisted of light childhood games which had gone extinct with my isolation. But although my barely present muscles protested with every step, I persevered, telling myself that soon, very soon, it would all be over.

With the ever present sun, the lack of the routine life on the boat, and no way to judge my distance in the unaccommodating landscape I had no choice but to consult the little silver pocket watch frequently for the passage of time, which I was surprised to find managed to keep going round in the glacial temperatures. I slept for short periods throughout the day as I feared to rest for too long would cause me to freeze to death. My "night" rest, which was the longest, only last from midnight to four in the morning. Although repetitive the sound of its ticking was comforting as the only man-made one in this frozen wilderness. Besides that I had howling wind, interrupted only by the piercing silence of that abandoned land when it died down. I could not bring myself the energy to talk aloud, and any kind of civilization was far, far away.

I was spared enough luck that I had no animal encounters. However several times, when I passed over thinner sections of the ice, I saw large shadows pass under me. Such occurrences never failed to cause a shiver to run down my back, which had nothing to do with the cold, but with that added effect I could not stop my teeth from chattering the rest of the day. As the air caused my entire face to become numb I bit my tongue and the inside of my cheek accordingly on such afternoons. In fact as I lay down around a fire small enough for the curve of my body to shelter the taste of blood came more often then not with the return of feeling.

As if the hours of silent intense cold trading off with vicious winds were not enough I did one morning face a snow storm. I had just woken when a few snowflakes began to fall. I was just thinking that they were sort of beautiful as they came down from the cloudless sky when, suddenly, the storm hit full blast. I could see nothing! With a great battle against the strong downward pushing winds I rose to my feet, searching the ground with them slowly for the rope which I'd been pulling the sled along with. After a few struggling minutes I found it and proceeded to take out another rope and tied it to my waist incase I lost grip of the hand one; I did not want to risk having the strong wind whisk it away or having it slip over some edge I would not be able to sea in such limited visibility. I had to bring my compass just inches from my face to see which way was north.

I started to make my way only to find that with every step the winds pushed the snow, coming down so thick that it was a like a wall, at me and I was moved two step backward. After a few laborious minutes of no progress I stopped and sat down again. Digging my legs into the quickly building layer of snow I lay back and let the tempest whip and wail its way over me until it was over.

A little over an hour latter I was able to stand up only to find myself waste deep in snow. I was able to lift myself out fairly easily but it was another two hours before I uncovered the sleigh and got moving.

Having gotten out so late I ate extra before I began and did not stop for my usual "lunch" break. It was nearing three o'clock when I stopped for the first time that day. If I had managed to keep the days straight this was my fourth and I was actually able to sit down for the first time, rather then just keel over.

The place where I had stopped was just before the first change in landscape I had seen so far. When I started out again I found myself quickly on ice clear of snow so it looked black because of the dark water beneath it. I leaned down to inspect it then took a hesitant step out, to be convinced off its thickness only when I dragged the sled gently on and didn't here a creak. I proceeded slowly, sliding slightly with each step until I got the hand of it about a hundred yards out.

It was about a half hour later that I noticed a dark object not far ahead of me on the ice. I had not noticed before because until this distance, with only the clear flat ice between it and the black waters, it had blended. Now I sped up my pace eager to see what it was.

In seconds I reached it and let go of the sled to fall onto my knees and grasp it. I raised it up and discovered that the object in my hands was a fine, heavy, dark brown. I was hyperventilating as I opened it to look at the inside label where, just as I'd suspected, a name was scrawled.

V. Frankenstein

I could not believe it, that the item for which I searched would just happen to come across my path, but I did not have long to absorb my shock. Suddenly a sound came to my ears that stopped my heart, the sound of breaking ice. I had not checked the ice since I started and as of late my line of sight had only been for the heap of cloth in my hands. However, now, my eyes grew wide as they followed the small but treacherous fissure that had just opened to my left down the line to a large whole of open water and broken pieces of ice crashing into each other and causes the cracks to go out farther and farther in every direction.

I started to run but it was useless. Although I had submitted to abandoning the sled entirely I had forgotten I had never untied it from my waist after the storm. In three steps I was suddenly yanked backward and the wind was knocked out of me as I landed flat on my back beside it. I flailed senselessly trying to find the knot only to find it hopelessly tangled. Panicking, I tugged frantically on the rope, but a crack was already widening beneath me. With one last ragged gasp I plunged into the icy, dark, violent water.

I was pushed and pulled helplessly this way and that until I had absolutely no idea which way was up. The cold was unbearable, I couldn't breath, even out; my lungs were frozen. I felt the sled pulling me down swiftly but every time I got my hands anywhere near the knot they were ripped away again. As I got caught up in a current pulling me down and away black began to creep in at the edges of my vision and my will to fight was quickly slipping away. Fire rose in my chest in painful contrast to the icy water outside. The water pulled me in unforgiving way, deeper and deeper, until I could not see any of the light from the sun, and darkness was consuming everything all around me.

Just as I was about to lose consciousness I broke the surface. I had no idea how but at that moment getting oxygen into my body took precedence over figuring that out. I lay out flat wherever it was that I had washed up and caught my breath unable to move for some time. Then I sat up knowing that if I stayed in these wet clothes I would die anyway and began to peel off the layers.

When I'd stripped three and had three still on to find the next layer barely wet I stopped and took the opportunity of my life not being in danger to examine my surroundings.

I was in some kind of cavern of ice. Long icicles, sharp as daggers, swayed menacingly all across the ceiling. Although no I could find no source of light it was not pitch black, merely dim, I could gaze easily around me. Before me the ice sloped down to meet the black water, from which I'd surfaced, as it splashed up on the entrance to the cavern. I took vague notice that it had brought my sled in with me. I figured I must be in inside a glacier above sea level as the water did not rise and fill up the grotto, which I was grateful for as gulps of oxygen eased the burning in my lungs.

It was strangely warm too. True, perhaps only just freezing, but a heated heaven compared to what I'd endured recently. I was never much for the science of climate but I figured this must be from the inability of the fierce winds to reach this little haven.

Satisfied after my short inspection that the place was safe, I slid a little further up from the water and laid my exhausted head down. I was sleeping in an instant.

It was much later when I woke up, I could tell because I actually felt rested for the first time since I'd left the boat. Glancing at the watch I found that I now had and internal alarm as it was exactly four in the morning. This time however that was around eleven hours of sleep.

I stretched out all my stiff muscles still laying down, hearing everything crack and pop, and then stood up. The cavern was a fair size, close to circular in shape with a diameter of perhaps twenty yards. Off to one side a large ice structure blocked the view of that corner so I walked around and couldn't believe my eyes.

Lying there was a small sled, or the remains of one anyway, with bits and pieces of what had been stored upon it scattered about. There were several different articles of clothing, quite similar to the ones lying by where I'd slept, along with some unrecognizable scraps of cloth. There was a wrapped package with a whole that I assumed once contained food. Several blankets were mixed in. There was a compass, and a clock that no longer worked, and a piece of parchment it appeared someone had been keeping track of the day on, and all sorts of such little things. Also laying about were several journals I could not count for certain because several were ripped in half and many had pages ripped out that now rested dispersed across the wreckage of items.

But all of these things would have been entirely insignificant if not for that which drew my eye. Rapped tightly around the half a handle that was still attached to the sled was a piece of dark brown cloth, an end of a sleeve, which matched perfectly with the tattered dark brown coat in my hands that was missing half a sleeve.

I'd thought I hit the jackpot with the discovery of the jacket, but now I stood before everything that my brother had left behind in the world.

I kneeled down unsteadily and reached my hand out towards the journal closest to me which just so happened to be intact. In fact it was bound with leather all the way around so when I untied and opened it I found that little water had leaked inside and though blurry the words and sketches were legible, not to mention surely in the hand of my deceased brother.

As I held the book in my hands it fell naturally to a page towards the middle. At first I could not understand or absorb any part of the strange and complicated diagram that spread across both pages. The contraption had a large tub supposed to be filled with water, and wires and pulleys every which way; switches, lights, wheels and all manner of contraptions all hooked together in incredibly complex web. But, as I looked harder and began to skim across the labels scribbled in every inch of spare space, recognition, both wonderful and terrible, dawned on me.

I was shocked at how much the universe was going along with this plan. Everywhere with everything in my life I'd had to struggle, but know as I made my way to my death it brought all the answers I needed right to my feet.

I had thought perhaps that I would find an appropriate method for my death in any remains I found, but never did I expect such blatant inspiration. Suddenly, as a stared down at my brother's intensely detailed diagram of his life giving contraption, everything was very clear.

In an instant I knew everything. I could see how the machine was designed to inject electricity into lifeless matter to stimulate life by a long and complex system. And I saw how it could be reversed; how it could be made to draw life from a body and turn it into a corpse for a few moments of electrical power. True I was none of the scientist that my brother was but, with a few minor modifications, it seemed entirely possible that the device could be fashioned to do the opposite of its original intent.

I got to work immediately. The other pages of the notebook were filled with more specific diagrams of each part of the machine that even I could follow. Between the supplies on my sled and the remains of Victor's I was able to find satisfactory, if crude, materials, parts, and instruments to construct a replica of that apparatus which had brought all of the trouble into my life.

Most of Victor's things were bits and scraps useless for any other purpose, but when I could spend no more time working for a day I tore through all of his journals that were still legible. There was the whole story, what Walton had told me and details extended more than it is possible for me to recall entirely.

I saw, reading my brother's thoughts during the creation on his monster, how ambition blinded him. The work of putting together something so unnatural, the ghastly task of his trips to graveyards and other places of the dead (the description of which interrupted my reading one day as a found a sudden irrepressible urge to vomit) drained the life right out of him. With every passing page I could feel him growing sick, becoming less human, and more deranged as he poured his soul into his creation.

Yet, for all I recognized it in him, I could only fight, not completely avoid that which he described as "a dark force" which bore him, and now me, on "like a hurricane." The work was all consuming, and the feelings that rose inside you with it inescapable. It was slightly different as I was motivated by something different. I was not trying to make something grand of myself; I did not look upon the contraption as a glorious door to the future. Indeed I hated it, with every moment I looked down upon my hands and the items within them with disgust.

However it was similar in that I still felt some inexplicable draw towards assembling the contraption. And, I could feel it draining my own life, in many ways. Not only did each bit of progress I made in building the device bring me closer to my death, but I was already withering away physically. Stuck in the cavern I began to strictly ration my food as my stores dwindled swiftly. Still for the first time in my life I found myself lean, not gangly. The long walks through the north and the force of tinkering away with my work each day had put a small amount of wiry muscle on my stature, which came in very handy as the pieces of the machine got bigger and bigger as I put more and more together.

I was again shocked at the effortless inspiration of my efforts when I read Victor's description of the stormy night when he brought his creature to life. I had been pondering how I was going to get a spark of electricity to begin the process once I finished the life-_taking_ contraption when I happened across this bit of information.

Although the ice enclosure muffled them so it seemed as though they were from a different world, I had detected a storm passing outside once or twice. Empowered by a sudden brilliant idea I took the long strip of metal that had been attached to the bottom of one side of Victor's sled and scaled the ice on a soft side where it was raised slightly and met the ceiling where it sloped sharply down. Crouched in the sideways V (after sliding down many times before being able to find any kind of graspable surface) between the two slopes, I thrust the rod up into the ceiling of ice with all my might.

I heard it dig into the ice and found it deep enough to stay suspended when I let go, but doubted it broke the surface, which was the whole point. So I grasped it firmly and drove it upwards, extending my legs for full force. Right before the sudden lurch caused me to slip and slide back to the ground I head the soft whistle of the wind as the metal broke the surface. Small cracks spread out from it but, to my relief, stopped about a foot out. Some icicles came crashing down but still under the overhang of the sloped part of the ceiling I was safe.

I examined my work; the pole came down into the room several feet from the main body of what I'd put together so far and stopped about three feet from the ground which meant it rose some four feet at least into the air above, more depending on the thickness of the ice. Perfect. Of course I was still not sure it would work perfectly but it was all I could do for the time being.

It turned out I needn't have worried as I found out just how well it worked the next day. The sound of an approaching storm didn't register in my mind as I meddled away on the contraption on the side, luckily, furthest from my makeshift lightning rod. A loud bang interrupted me as a small explosion went off on the end of that long strip of metal.

After recovering from the shock that had caused me to shrink behind the machine for cover I walked slowly, carefully, out around it. On the ground beneath the pole was a small black circle. Looking slowly from it to the rod as my eyes rose to the ceiling I smiled mischievously. It looked like I made a fair scientific engineer after all.

Still precautions had to be taken till it was time. I found a scrap of rubber from who knows and what in Victor's wreckage and fastened it to the end. Then I returned to my work; turning around to face the machine I grinned, it was nearly done.

It took a little over two weeks for me to assemble everything. The time had been kept a constant concern in my mind, pacing my work, as that same little silver pocket watch lay open by the lovely patch of ice where I slept, ticking away.

Feeling that completion was near I had worked straight into the night and now, just after eleven, I stood before my construction, in awe of how it was both marvelous and dreadful at the same time.

From the other metal strip I had shaved and melted away layer by layer until it was thin enough to be flexible so I had a stiff sort of handmade wire. It was course and so jagged it cut my hands a million times every time I picked it up but it would do. With that I went over to the rod, took the rubber off, and tied the wire around it. Then, I rapped the rubber around the other end of the wire and held it there as I dragged it behind me. I picked up my pack containing the few items I had refused to use in my construction, and went off to the "table" I had made out of turning over my sled and placing it in the middle of the life-taking contraption.

First I took out the knife and stabbed it into the ice on the ground besides the sled. Next to it I laid Leo's handkerchief, and beside that Robert Walton's gold pocket chain. Grasping the headmaster's gift in my hand, I lay down on the table and fastened the belt I'd attached to it around my middle. I suspected some thrashing and wanted to make sure my body stayed attached until the deed was done. Raising my left arm to pull on a rope hanging down near my head, the whole contraption creaked and shuddered slightly as it lowered itself to come in contact with my body at various points. Then I looked to my right at the line of my most treasured possessions and with a trembling hand laid down the watch beside it so it faced me.

I let the constant ticking and unending movement of the second hand calm me one last time till I turned my face away as a single tear slid down my cheek as I shuddered slightly and let out a shallow breath. Staring into the dark chute that I now found inches from my face I raised both my hands to wind the wire through it.

Hearing the thunder outside, I bit the inside of my cheek and tore away the rubber in one swift motion.

And so I invited an old friend into my life once more, Death.


	7. 6 Nothing

As fate would have it lightning stuck at precisely the same moment as that motion. As electricity surged through the machine, power coursed through my veins, and I thought the shock would kill me instantly but it didn't. I watched through fuzzy, rolling eyes, and heard as my creation whirred and processed.

The course jagged wire shot out of the chute, pierced my chest grossly, and hooked around my sternum, brushing up against all those vital organs nearby.

I was wrong about the thrashing; the pain was too intense for that. I lurched up sharply and froze, paralyzed by the hell that was being forced upon my body. My back arched in a disturbingly unnatural way above the table while my head hung back, upside down, growing heavy as what blood wasn't spurting from my chest rushed to it.

But it was working. It became suddenly much quieter as another part took over the main action and I felt for the life of me, literally, as though I was being drained. Energy so intense it practically shone, like a fire, like a _soul_ was making its way up from my chest, coiling around the wire and disappearing up the shoot.

I was fading fast and just about gone when it happened. A whistle, so high-pitched it was barely in human range sounded somewhere above me. Through the slit of my eyes I saw how the metal connecting the chute to the next part was so hot it was glowing white. It was too much.

It burst sending the energy there, the life, shooting out in all directions, including straight down, back into me.

Cringing…

Pulsing, I could feel every nerve ending…

Screaming…

Crashing, breaking, crunching…

More screaming…

Fire, burning…

Still Screaming…

Fading…….Dark…..

Nothing.


	8. 7 Undead

I could hear the icicles melting on the roof of the cavern. No, that was absurd, you can't _hear _something melting. Yet I could, not like I could hear the droplets of water hit the floor as they melted, but I could hear the particles splitting, shifting, and changing phase. Yes, I could hear, and smell it, and taste it on my tongue, and feel it in my bones, and I was quite sure that if I opened my eyes I would be able to see, in a way clearer than I could have ever imagined, but I didn't want to.

Just like I didn't want to see the air I could hear slipping _silently_ through the cracks in the ceiling, or the sled from which I could detect a hint of the scent of the flannel shirt the woodcarver had been wearing when he made it, or the little minnow I could feel brushing against the iceberg in the water hundreds of feet below, or the remains of a fire that had gone out days ago, yet I could taste the fish I had smoked over it.

However, it was not the extreme sensitivity of these senses which made me afraid to open my eyes; it was that I was sensing ANYTHING.

After the past couple years I could not say for sure what my beliefs about heaven were but if it did exist I knew myself far to damned to hope for forgiveness. As for hell, although I didn't feel cold, I was sure it wasn't hot. This wasn't expected. Everything was supposed to be over, done, gone. The curse my family brought upon the world eliminated with me.

I lay there for about an hour completely bewildered, refusing to open my eyes, and at a complete loss. Then a drop of water fell right into the middle of my forehead, surprising me into starting up and opening my eyes

I was in the same cavern, although I could not say it did not look a little different, still lying on the table/sled. The remains of my machine were in piles all around me. It appeared the explosion had caused a huge shock wave to go through the entire system. Things were burning too, the room was very smoky and everything was covered in a layer of black soot as the wreckage disintegrated away. The shock wave had also caused the ceiling to fall in over the entrance. The cracks on the ceiling from the lightning rod had spread in the commotion and the fires that had apparently been burning away the past couple of day had caused them to melt and widen so that I could see the sky through them. In fact the whole room was dripping, but that ominous sight did not hold my attention.

My eyes lowered to the floor below the hole, following the path the lightning rod must have taken as it broke loose from the ceiling, and fell straight down on top of the silver pocket watch I had placed on the floor, perhaps at the same moment that my life ended, before it fell over and lay across the ground as it did now.

I rose, registering slightly that the belt I'd fastened around me, which I felt still firmly holding me there while I refused to open my eyes, fall away with no resistance; but the focus of my thought was the watch. I picked it up and examined it. Half the chain was gone in the wreckage and the top had a large black burn mark. The glass over the face was broken in a way that reminded me strangely of the devil's face. It took me a moment to figure out that it was indeed broken, for the second hand was still making its way round and round, but the hour and the minute were both stuck, unmoving, at twelve midnight some nights before. However it no longer ticked, it continued on its endless cycle but made no sound.

Closing it softly in my hand I found my bag miraculously still salvageable under the table and placed it inside. I searched around on the floor and put the other items that had been most important to me in too. All the while I tried not to thing about the strangely acute senses that were picking up everything. I did not understand them, and that frightened me.

I had failed, and although my desire to end my life was stronger than ever, I could not do it, not here, not now. But to make sure it was kept in mind I found a piece of my wire.

As I slipped in my bag I was suddenly reminded of something that stopped my breathing. In flash vision memories I saw it plunge into my chest again; never would I forget that pain. And now, as I remembered the injury that should have killed over the course of a couple hours, even though the rest of the contraption failed, I stood frozen refusing to look down at my chest.

Slowly I slid a trembling hand up my torso with out looking down. First I felt the edges of the torn and frayed fabric of my shirt where it had been ripped apart by the wire. And I heard the dried blood on it crackle as I move my hand over it. As my hand came in to contact with my cold chest I pulled back a little, but then gritted my teeth and swiped it across in one swift motion.

There was nothing; it was perfectly smooth. No cut as I grazed my hand on a section of wire still imbedded there or sickly submersion sound as my fingers entered an exposed hole in my chest. After searching around a few more times I looked down to see that indeed there was nothing wrong with my chest, but there was something different.

There were two small jagged pale circles, side by side, in the middle of my chest connected by and array of crisscrossing lines; just like the kind of scar that would have formed after years of healing from the knot the wire had wound itself into around there, if it were possible to survive its retraction. And out from that across the right side of my chest was a long jagged line, the kind that would have been left behind if the wire was ripped out of me as the contraption collapsed. I should have been dead, or bleeding heavily; instead I had the pale scars of an injury one would have to assume happened years ago, not a few days. I didn't get a chance to ponder this mystery though, as at that moment I heard that terrible sound of ice for the second time in a month.

With all the ruckus from the failed experiment and the fires burning up what was left over, the stability of the ice structure had been severely compromised, and now it was caving in. The layers of ice came crashing down and I dodged this way and that knowing there was no way to escape.

As one chunk fell away a clear hole into the open became available and I dashed towards it finding myself surprisingly limber. The sound was deafening, especially with this new hearing I seemed to have adapted. I bounded up the side of the room, jumping from and swinging off this and that in the chaos. I credited my incredible physical ability to a primary instinct as a tried to escape from the collapsing room. With one last bound my hand grasped the edges of the whole, but just as I was about to pull myself up that section broke away and fell into me, plowing me down.

Right as I was about to hit the floor it separated, cracking all the way down the middle and I was submersed again in the treacherous arctic water, this time with a small glacial coming down on top of me.

I struggled to find away around the ice plummeting down into the water around me so I could find a way to the surface, but I knew almost immediately it was a hopeless struggle. It was everywhere, pandemonium had broken lose in desolate north because of the presence of one troublesome little man.

So I just stopped, I was supposed to be dead anyway. Clearly nature was trying to finish off what I couldn't manage. But a curious thing happened as I let myself float limply through the dark waters. More and more seconds went by but the burning of oxygen deprivation did not come to my chest and my head stayed crystal clear. With the super awareness of each nerve ending I could feel the freezing temperature of the water, yet I was not cold. When two huge chunks of ice started to close in on each other, threatening to crush me I through my hands out in an uncontrollable reflex to push against them and they floated away; those tons of ice moved through the watery abyss at the touch of my hands like a feather through the air on a cloudy day.

I stared down at my hands in wonder, amazement, and a slightly frightened shock trying to figure out what had happened to me. First the scar, then leaping around the crumpling grotto like a trained acrobat, and now this. I must have got caught up in these thoughts for suddenly without knowing what was happening I broke the surface of the endless sea.

I gasped for breath out of habit and comfort rather than need. I found myself wading in the middle of the ocean, the ice hundreds of yards away. Finding it, regrettably, apparent that I was not going to die simply by staying in the water I started to make my way towards it. Like all sports I had never been much of a swimmer, and yet I made my way easily across the harsh rough expanse to find myself at my destination in seconds. Clinging to the ice I looked back at the distance I had traversed. No, I must have been delusional; I was incapable of keeping time after consulting the clock so regularly I assured myself. But in the back of my mind I knew that I had been had become so accustomed to it I could count the ticks of the second clock that still went round, even though it was now silent. I had to give credit to whoever the maker was to find that it any part at all worked after all the trials I had made it endure.

Letting my mind take up the saner topic of the pocket watch I raised myself up out of the water and onto the ice. My bag was clinging to me in the water, and now freezing to me in the air. Before it could get a chance to become stuck at my side I removed it so I could inspect the damage. The bag would be fine when, if, it got a chance to dry, same with the handkerchief. I suspected the knife would rust a bit but it was still in one piece and if it lasted up to this point I doubted that the cold would shatter it in the near future. The chain was unchanged, only perhaps a bit shinier, as was the wire, only a bit darker. Last I took out the pocket watch which indeed, though water logged, still maintained its second hand going in round and round silently.

I laid the items out on the ice to see what the sun, which was high in the sky, could do for them. Then I stood up and circled around, trying to situate myself, but the landscape was as endless and monotone as ever. With an exasperated sigh I let myself crumple down onto the ice. Everything but my bag had been swept away into the ocean as I escaped. I didn't have anything! No compass to figure out my way back, or any kind of supplies to survive a journey back through the wilderness.

As this thought crossed my mind I realized it must have been days since I had eaten, yet I was not hungry at all. Nor thirsty, for although there was some strange itchy faint burning in the back of my throat, I was quite confident that water would not ease it. Admittedly I could have been a bit adverse to water simply because of all the unintentional time I'd spent in it recently, but it was still strange.

After about an hour, with the same bitter determination and unknown force that had gotten me to swim to the ice, I set out in the direction I thought was south based on the sun. Once again a strange feeling began to overcome me. Without thinking or trying my pace became brisk, I was running, sprinting, without exerting any effort. My breathing did not become labored in any way, and legs my pushed off the ground and out, further and further, without any strain.

And so I flew across the icecaps of the north so fast I might have been a blur had anyone seen me. I thought perhaps that I was dead, that this was some kind of a bizarre afterlife, or maybe, at least that I was sleeping and it was all a dream. However, as I traveled more and more distance, I could not deny that it seemed nothing like a dream. In fact I felt more real and present then I could ever remember being before.

As what would be dusk was coming on I found my sense of direction was correct as I detected, with my abnormally strong vision, the mast of the ship rising from behind the glacier is had crashed into on the horizon, a few miles ahead.

I was there in seconds. I stood on the cliff, before descending the other side to the ship, looking back at the vast land I had just traversed in hours, when it had taken me over two weeks the time before. Bewildered but unable to even try to think about it anymore I made my way down to the ship

I stood before it, still fully wedged in the ice, and grimaced, not having any idea how to proceed. Suddenly as I looked down at my hands, I thought of how those two ice-berg chunks had floated away, and thinking myself totally insane I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes and gave the hull a shove with all my might.

I heard motion but was not sure what to expect so when I opened my eyes and saw what had become of my efforts my eyes grew as big as saucers. There was my boat, back in free water, nearly a mile away. I did not even have time or energy to marvel again at this unexplainable strength. Cursing furiously I jumped into the water, again, and chased after the boat, of course, reaching it with ease and pulled myself up the smooth hull as though it were nothing.

The journey back to England I do not have nearly as much to reflect upon, if only because for most of it I was in such a state of shock that it is a void in my memory. I did find myself experimenting with the "super strength" a lot; this voyage moved a lot quicker as I paddled furiously with giant oars I found below deck to give us an extra boost in addition to the sails. I watched with precision the birds soaring far ahead, felt storms coming far in advance, and smelled smoke in the air anytime I passed within ten miles of any kind of settlement. I ate only because I was worried what would happen if I didn't, even though the fish I caught left their unwanted taste in my mouth for the rest of the trip. But I was not hungry; every other day I forgot and went the whole day without noticing until I saw the fish jumping in the water at dusk.

It took just under a week to return to England, where the autumn was approaching. Roaming hills covered with forests tinted orange and red at the edges rose up to meet me until they disappeared behind the port town as I pulled into the harbor I had left a little under one season before.

I was not sure what had caused me to come back here and as I stood on the dock beside my boat I was at a loss for how to move forward. All the way back from the north I had made my way without thinking. Now I was unsure why.

As I moved around aimlessly on the dock I caught glance of my reflection in the still water for the first time in weeks. Until about a week before I am fairly sure there would not have been much difference in my appearance, but now I felt as thought I were staring down at a stranger. I was quite certain that my features had not in fact changed a bit, my eyebrows still arched the same way over dark, wide, deep eyes; my pale lips held their tight line at the bottom of a face only slightly gaunt so it brought out the jaw line without looking sickly. My rusty brown hair was perhaps, a bit longer, but it still swept in the same natural way to one side to hang over just above my right eye. Yet, for all these things that had been reflected back at me my entire life I was also sure that even a person who had spent everyday with me up till the day I left would not have been able to recognize me. The visage that stared back at me from the water had some kind of mysterious confidence, an unknowable power, behind it which somehow changed the effect of its appearance. And without thinking about, after years of creeping around hunched over like a scolded dog I stood in a way demanded respect unequivocally. Every line of my body was sharp and definite, the reflection I gazed at so present and real. But somehow this gave the opposite effect; I felt as though I were gazing at a vision from a dream. It was slightly terrifying, yet overwhelmingly hypnotic.

I was brought back from my thoughts by the familiar uproar from the tavern down the street. Just like last time the beautiful young woman was being cheered into a dance and once again I walked toward the little building, but this time I did not turn caught up in the beauty's dance, no one noticed as I slipped inside. Watching her all the way, I found an abandoned table in a dingy corner and sat down. My eyes followed her every move as she skipped and swayed across the floor, kicking, twirling, and doing other fancy little things with her hands above her head.

She wore a long tan flowing skirt, like the gypsies, which twirled around here while she moved, along with a loose white blouse topped with a black vest which showed off her slim torso. All around her neck and wrists were strings of beads and silver and gold bands. Her long dusty brown hair was in a braid that went most of the way down her back, but a couple strands had come out to hang around her heart shaped face. A blush painted her cheeks the whole time beneath pale gray blue eyes that were cool in a way that wasn't icy, but made you feel as though she were constantly off in a day dream. Plumb lips framed a wide smile as she danced. She really was quite beautiful.

As the song ended she began to walk off the floor but then, as though so could feel my gaze penetrating her she looked up in my direction. Without knowing what I was doing or why, some natural impulse caused me to raise my hand and motion her over with a slight grin.

Looking back down quickly, she scurried over to me and breathless from the dance shot out nervously, "Good evening sir, welcome to the Renaissance Tavern, can I get you anything?"

I smiled wider, still going from one moment to the next as it came to me, and gestured to the chair across from me, "You seem winded, why don't you sit down…forgive me but I do not know your name."

She looked around the room hesitantly but took the chair and smiled at me breathing out a deep breath, "Thank you, it's Caroline, Caroline Rafters. My father owns the tavern, normally he would probably be angry with me for sitting while I'm working but his number one rule is 'Give the customer whatever he wants,'" she proclaimed smirking slyly. "I feel as though I've seen you before, what's your name?"

"Ernest Frankenstein," I stated, "but I'm afraid I'm not from around here, my compliments to you on your extraordinary business, it's a fine establishment," I complimented superfluously.

She smiled knowingly back at me, "That's very kind of you to say, what brings you hear, Mr. Frankenstein?"

Deflecting the question I laughed, "Ernie please, Mr. Frankenstein was my father and Ernest always seemed a bit stiff to me."

She looked at me curiously, "Was?"

Not believing the words that came out of my mouth, I stated as though were reporting the weather, "He died when I was fifteen."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said abashed.

I could not imagine what made me so nonchalant, but I continued evenly, "He was a good man, made the most of his life while he could."

She nodded with understanding then broke into a story about her mother, who had also passed, and how she used take her on long walks up the mountain and one day they were caught in a rainstorm and ran the whole way back, laughing. We sat there talking for hours. She was seventeen and next year she would be going away to a girl's school she had found in France, which she was immeasurably excited about. I learned all her favorite foods, and her hobbies, and dreams. Of course I had to have a story too, and as the night went on lies of some dream life rolled off my tongue like nothing.

I had grown up on a farm in the country. I had one sister who was off and married with her own family now. My mother still lived at home and I visited her often. Using the small fortune my father had left behind I had been traveling and learning from scholars around the world since I finished school. It was all lies, but that night it didn't feel that way, it felt so natural that my life might have been that way; so I let that curious intuition lead me on.

It was after midnight and the tavern was empty except for one man snoring in the corner, who Caroline explained, never left, when she rose from her seat.

"I should go, it's very late." She said reluctantly.

I stood with her, "Perhaps I should walk with, I would feel bad having you go all the way home by yourself in the dark," I offered.

She smiled brightly, "Oh yes, thank you, it's not really that far but I would like to show you something, it's on the way," she promised.

"Of course," I nodded, offering her my arm as we slipped out the back, which she took with another bright grin. We began to ascend a small hill which she informed me her house was just over the crest of, but half way up the path she pulled me off to the side.

"This way" she whispered excitedly taking off across a field of wilting daisies, pulling me along by the hand. Over a bit the hill dropped slightly and we went tumbling over, rolling down the short distance, as she laughed magically. I sat up in the grass and watched as she stopped and collected herself.

She caught my gaze but pointed ahead of us, "Look." The dip in the hill rolled us down to sit beside a beautiful pond with a view of the town beyond. She pulled me up, uttering a simple, "C'mon," as she dragged me towards a little wood shack on the bank to the right.

It was musty, crowded, and dirty inside. "Some of the fishermen keep their supplies in here for when they come up," she explained as began to ascend a ladder nailed to the wall which I hadn't noticed in the dark until she was on it, "but the best part is up top." She smiled down at me before swinging herself up onto the loft. Then she poked her head back over, "You coming?"

When I got to the top she was laying down looking up at the ceiling, mesmerized. Without looking away she patted at the floor beside her and when I lay down I saw why. Above our heads was a large hole in the ceiling which perfectly framed the bright white full moon. She sighed and turned her head to rest it on my shoulder. "This is my favorite place in the world," she proclaimed, "Isn't it beautiful?"

"Magnificent," I agreed genuinely and turned my head to look at her, our faces inches apart. Suddenly unsure for the first time that night, I sat up swiftly but gently. I stood up and turned away from her, "Simply breathtaking," I said breathlessly.

There was a moment of silence before I heard the rustling as she rose then another as she moved her trembling hand to place it on my shoulder. "Ernie?" she pleaded in a soft hesitant voice.

Her trembling touch undid me. I turned around and looked her straight in the eyes, then gently, she seemed so fragile to me, took her face in my hands and pressed my lips to hers.

Considerations of romance related topics had been the furthest thing from my mind for many years, but I could still claim that I had always expression 'sparks flew' very corny, but I suddenly found it was something you had to experience to understand. I let one hand trail down to the small of her back to hold her against me as she wrapped her arms around my neck and tangled her fingers in hair, so close I could feel her blood racing beneath her skin.

Our lips parted, both of us gasping, but I did not stop. Instead I moved to here neck, my lips caressing the skin there. Then, half way down, I bit.

She gave a little scream and fainted but I hardly noticed, for as I sucked her blood from the whole my teeth had made the itchy burning in the back of my throat that had been getting stronger everyday since I first felt it was easing for the first time.

Suddenly realizing what I was doing I pushed her limp body away from me and stumbled back in shock, nearly falling of the edge of the loft. Scared, bewildered, and feeling slightly sick I turned to go down the ladder and run as fast and far as I could. But at that moment a breeze came through and carried the sent of her blood back to me.

Disgusted with myself, but unable to resist, I went back to her, leaving only when I had drained every last drop so that she was as pale as the moon she lay beneath and one of the silver bracelets that had been around her wrist jingled in my bag.

I wanted to escape everything. As I made my way, running, out of town, I did not want to think about what happened, or how, or why, but I couldn't block it out. Strange things had been happening since I woke up after the experiment and I could not write them off no longer; it had _changed_ me. I moved like a bullet across the English landscape, recalling I how I had thrust away the boat and the ice and knew that I was now more than human. I saw the spots of blood on my shift and remembered how my long and sharp incisors had felt as I wiped my tongue across them when I went back, and recognized that I was less than human. The agility, the appearance, the intuition, the senses; all of it flew through my head and I could not ignore the word that bounced around my thoughts, trying to get in as I fought against it but it was hopeless, I knew. And it echoed inside my head, "Vampire."

True the ghoulish creature of the night from horror stories did not exactly match up with all my new developments but I suspected the blood drinking was the only mandatory one, and as they really weren't supposed to be real, it could be understood that some details would be missing.

I was bitter; these sarcastic thoughts were running through my head to avoid confronting the real problem. But I stopped troubling myself to find that the 'intuition' had led me to a cliff that rose over a natural harbor full of jagged rock that descended into the ocean beyond. I looked over the edge for one moment, and stepped off.

I didn't really expect it to work, vampires were immortal weren't they? I suppose I just hoped. But it was for nothing. I hit the ground full force but felt no pain. I was aware of all the rocks trying to spear my body, but they failed to even break the skin. I could not bring myself to work up the motivation to get up so I just stat there sulking in my despair and misery at my hopeless situation.

I was a monster, an abomination for all of mankind to scorn and fear. And it was all because I had failed to learn from my brother, I had tried to fix something that was beyond me, tried to make myself more important than I was, and now I was this revolting thing. I could not die but my life had indeed ended in the cavern.

I was the undead.


	9. 8 Fate

The next couple weeks were filled with failed attempts to end my life. Despite that I knew deep down it was hopeless I could not stop trying; I was so ashamed and revolted with myself. So, I tried everything. I downed entire containers of all different kinds of chemicals, to feel it evaporate before it hit the bottom of my throat. I tried to hang myself only to remember from falling beneath the ice up north that I did not need to breath. I took violently to my knife, only to have it shatter against my skin. I still carried the pieces in my bag though. I stood atop lightning rods when storms passed but like a rock, when it struck I was already lifeless. I did not eat, but that held no affect; the only thing I noticed change no matter what I put myself through, was that with each passing day, the itchy burning in my throat grew stronger again.

Completely desperate I tried even the most ridiculous and foolish things, which upon testing only appeared more so. I sat in on a mass beneath the shadow of a huge silver cross to no avail for over an hour. I went back at night and tried all different means and stroked my hand across it thinking I might burst into flames, and then tried all methods of impalement, but each attempt failed worse the one before. Snatching a bag of garlic from a shop at night when no one was around, I sat with it the whole next day on my lap, the only effect being that I crinkled my nose at the intense smell all day.

The most humorous of my trials, though, was the wooden stake. I stood alone atop a small mountain in the middle of night as a bit of snow fell and plunged one I had carved from a tree towards my chest, only to have it splinter into a million pieces in my hand, leaving my chest unmarked except for the scar from the end of my last life, when I was actually alive.

Although it took quite some time before I actually gave up on my efforts, I knew all along deep down that it was useless. However, the weeks I spent in the abandoned countryside did prove useful to orient myself with my new non life. Before I had been doing all I could to block out what was brought to me by my super sensitive senses. But I found with practice I could train my find to filter through it all in the background and only pick up consciously things which interested me. For example I always knew what kind of weather was moving towards me, I could detect shelter and escape routes like it was programmed into me, and I forgot nothing. I found my physical abilities unbeatable as I made my way easily, sprinting, climbing, swimming, and leaping, across the rough landscape of the country.

I passed cities, seeing their lights in the distance and turning away feeling sick. It was as when the snow began to fall, when I could smell that crispness in the air, and feel how everything slowed down, and the houses I passed showed smoke coming from the chimneys without fail, that I really began to wander.

I had abandoned my suicide attempts and had no where to go, nor nothing to do, so I just walked. I made no decisions and never thought about a destination or where I had been, I just kept moving one foot in front of the other. When it got dark I would lay down right where I was till morning. Sometimes I'd sleep and sometimes I wouldn't. When I did I had nightmares where Caroline's face followed me everywhere, sometimes accompanied by my family, and the headmaster, and Walton, or even a blurry figure of a ghastly creature I presumed to be the Creature.

It was in this passive, unaware state of mind that I stumbled my way to the edges of a foreign town, somewhere along the Europe and Asia border I suspect, a few months latter in the dead of winter. I did not realize I had gotten so close until it was too late, I smelled him.

I was on a long dirt road and just a bit further from where I was there was a cluster of buildings on either side of the road along with houses sprinkled across the hills in the surrounding area. The sun was setting and the street was dead except for one shabby place on the left side, which the man was heading into, and I followed him.

After the months in isolation there was a roaring fire in the back of my throat and at the scent of blood it took all precedence over my mind. I did not think about the issues that could arise of me slipping into the crowded place in such a state but luckily I seemed to have locked in to him. I moved fluidly through the mass of people to his side in an instant. In the back of my mind I took in my surroundings. They were all obviously residents of the same country village. I could tell from the simple minded vacant expressions on their faces. They were also all drunk, swaying and falling into each other while they sang along with a woman up on stage.

But I had mind for none of that. The burning was excruciating. Swiftly and silently I grabbed his arm and dragged him to a door I saw at the back; no one noticed. Inside the closet behind it I broke his neck before he could scream, then I lowered my mouth to his neck and drank deeply. The whole event was carried on in a way orchestrated by some primal animal like instincts. Several minutes later I dropped him to the ground, and he landed face down; I never saw his face.

It was only when the deed was done that I came to myself and took in full awareness of my surroundings. I turned around unable to look at the body but the disgust was now where near as strong as the first time, the _need_ had been just too strong for me to doubt it.

Of course it could also be that unlike Caroline I had not fallen in lo—

"No." I swore to myself. I would not let my thoughts go down that torturous path. I knew everyone outside was pretty caught up in the festivities but I would not doubt that at least one person would pick up on the fresh blood on my shirt and could not see how that would go well. They seemed the kind of people that would kill a stranger as soon as look at them. Still, I couldn't stay in there, so I took a deep breath and darted out with my head down, hoping no one would notice me as I slipped out.

No such luck. Right in the middle of everything a tipsy old man reached out and caught my arm.

"Where you going there junior, skip out now and you'll miss out on all the fun!" he slurred in a language I had learned in my younger years enough to translate but its name slipped my mind now in panic.

"Johnson, you picked a right fresh one there, send the lad up," came a bellowing voice from the stage. She was a big woman, although there were so many layers to her dress I could have been mistaken, with frizzy red hair going in every direction, and she was smiling in my direction with a wily gleam in her eye.

I could have bolted easily but I was afraid of the consequences of exposing such ability. So instead I let the crowd push me up to the platform stage with the lady. Laughing heartily she put her arm around my shoulders and greeted loudly, "Come now, handsome, you got a name?"

"Ernest," I blurted out, frantically looking around for an escape. A man with shaded eyes and a scraggly beard was looking at me suspiciously from a table nearby.

The woman mistook my anxiety. She exclaimed, "Oh, _Ernest_, a handsome name for a handsome boy," she winked and I felt my stomach lurch. "No need to me so nervous. I am Marianne, the entertainment hostess for tonight," at which she threw hear arms open to an outburst of applause and took a very immodest bow, "and you lad have just been selected for a little dance off, now that's not so terrifying is it?" she insisted.

But before she could shove me off to the section of the floor clear of people, I presumed for such activities, the man at the table spoke up in a husky voice, pointing at my shirt. "What's that there, that a blood stain, lookin' that fresh? What've you been doing tonight boy?" he inquired darkly.

Marianne glared at him, clearly angry to have him messing with her program. Pushing me out of his sight line and onto the dance floor she retorted. "Now you mind your own business you ugly bastard, where do get of insulting such a boy?" She glanced back at me, "Probably fought of a bear with his bare hands, or protected some girly from some hideous soul, like yourself, or something else heroic like that, such a dashing little thing," she declared smiling greedily over her shoulder at me and finished aggressively back at him, "just the face of an angel there so don't be trying to raise no trouble because your jealous." The man sat silently for a moment or two then got up and walked out.

I was astounded. I could believe it, I hadn't really had any use or practice with my changed appearance but now I understood that it was camouflage; I could get away with anything, because it enchanted people. Every face in the room looked dreamingly at me, totally trusting. However I didn't get that much time to contemplate the new discovery as the group of men in the corner took to their instruments and the crowd began chanting me on. Sighing, I let that charming intuition take control of me again and moved fluidly and skillfully over the dance floor. The crowd marveled and cheered at my movements and joined in collectively a bit later, saying no soul would dare challenge my mastery at foot work. It was all so absurd to me. How they pranced around a murderer, a monster in their midst, like he was some god because he had an endearing face and knew how to dance. Yet it obviously made an impact. I was kept there until the early hours of the morning as girl by girl kept asking for a dance and man after man got me to have a drink with him. They all got ridiculously intoxicated as the night went on but of course every glass disappeared almost immediately after entering my system so they had no effect.

Finally, when almost everyone had left or passed out I managed to get out, glad to be rid of their pointless activities, false trust, and meaningless chatter. I breathed in the cold, crisp morning air just outside the door and was about to take off full speed when I registered that there was someone sitting up against the wall behind me.

I whirled around in a blur, but the man, eyes still shaded by his large hat, laughed and questioned, "Late night, huh?" I couldn't be sure of course but I suspected he was raising his eyebrows up at me. "Plenty of fun I suspect, although you seem pretty steady on your feet, not too drunk then huh? Quite and accomplishment with that lot."

"Alcohol doesn't affect me much, I murmured.

He frowned, "Not one of the best things to develop an immunity to if you ask me," he grunted, "but suppose you don't want judgments from the dirt at your feet, go on, run along." His tone was submissive and complacent.

I was very curious about the outcast man, being much more familiar with that role than my current one, and what the people had so collectively against him that made him so blatantly and acceptingly rejected. "Beg my pardon, why would you say that, what makes your advice any less valuable then the next person's?"

He tilted his head upwards toward me in a suspicious manner, "Oh you are a charmer aren't you?" he grumbled. "Well then best to reveal to you the unworthiness of your efforts sooner than later, I suppose."

He reached up and took off the hat that cast his face in shadow. When I could see him clearly I would guess that he was in his mid-twenties. I suspected is skin was paler than it looked covered in dirt and grime. His fine blond hair had obviously gone a long time with out being cut as it was a hopeless shaggy mess that fell down all around his face.

But I could also see that even if he were given a good clean up, he would still be an ugly thing. His lips were so thin they were hardly there and not at all in line with the yellow teeth behind them. His nose looked like a zigzag line so I could not imagine the amount of times it had been broken. Most noticeable though were his "eyes." The right one was an unattractive musty color but the left one, or rather where it was supposed to be, was the ghastly black hole of an empty socket which three long scars ran across.

Slightly shocked I exclaimed, "Good Lord man! What happened to you?"

He squinted at me as if expecting me to forget the question and flee from the sight of him, but I was intrigued. After a moment he groaned and answered me.

"Well a lot I suppose if you're really askin' then. I won't pretend I was very handsome even as a young lad, but things have certainly gotten worse. When I was six a horse on the farm bucked me in the jaw and set it all askew like it is. My mother could barely put clothes on my back; there was never any chance for no doctor. I have been beaten up a quite a few times. I come around any corner in the dark and any one I happens across takes to thinkin' I'm some demon coming for them; or the men who know me get drunk and seek me out 'cause no one will care. I tried to fight 'em off when I was little more than I boy, but I never could through a punch; my father walks out when I was two see, never learned nuttin. So I founds it easier just to let them go to, overs quicker that way. Still, they always goes for the nose, something they love about that sick crunch I suppose."

I got the sense that the man had never been asked to talk before, and that he quite enjoyed the opportunity. He drawled on and his uneducated language made my head spin, but I made no effort to stop him.

"I was nineteen when I lost me eye. Little girl of one on the ladies who lives around here had gone running off. It was getting late sos the whole town was out looking for her. She liked the woods so there was some of us up theres. We'd split to groups of two or three to look but I's was alone course. I was turning my heads all about, searching. I was worried the poor little thing must a been scared reals bad. So I wasn'ts watching wheres I was going, right, and BAM! Tripped right into a cave, a bear's cave. Landed right on tops of the beast too! I sure yous can imagine that made him happy none. I tried to run but my's feets were just a slipping and sliding, and there was trees and stuff every where I kept getting hungs up on. Can't remember just how it happened next, it was all pretty fast and jumbly in the brain, you know? Just know it hurt so bad I howled, just like one of them wolves. Anyways a storm startsed up and scares him away, and I stumble back to town. Theys all there, around the girl whose they found in the shed behind her house. That made me happy, she was just playing; I was so worried about hers being all scared.

"I's was just about to walk away, knowing I must have been some nasty sight, when a lady nears the edge of the crowd saw me and let off the worst scream you'ves just ever heard.

"'Demon! Oh the devils son! Run, run, what an evil spirit! Just look at that bloody sight, and no eye. Flee, I can feel death upon me at the sight!'" he echoed in a shrill voice then continued, "she cries all drama like then a faints right theres. So then one of the guys runs up towards me with a torch all likes he's ready to put me aflame. I threws my arms up but he stops just infront and leans in to looks at me then lets out a laugh, a right cold laugh he did have.

"The he tells 'em all, 'Why, it's just McGregor, gone and got his face all finished.' And theys all laugh with him of course and he goes, 'Let's go to bed folks leave the bastard to clean himself up.' And theys all start to move away but before leaving himselfs he turns back to me and smiles, but it wasn't really a smile you know? Really dark instead of warm. He says to me 'Try not to drip any blood on the ground; we wouldn't want the dirt getting soiled.' Then he laughed all cold again and walks away."

Finally 'McGregor' seemed out of things to say and I could think of nothing as I tried to absorb it all, so I stood and he sat there for some moments in silence.

After a while he breathed out, "Well that's it I suppose, all the big things anyways. Since then I just trys to stay out of their ways…and sight."

I just stared at him, completely astounded. The man was a mystery to me, and an idol. He had every reason to turn his back on the world, to be angry and bitter. No one expected anything but a scoundrel from him, yet he submitted to none of that. He was a man who lived by his own standards, and that was something I had never seen or heard of before, and I was amazed.

"McGregor is it?" I asked.

He nodded up at me, "Wilfred James McGregor the third, that me. Call me's McGregor though please, not that I wants the formality, wouldn't expect no fine Sir like yourself to be's paying no respects to me, I just thinks that a God awful name, Wilfred, who names three generations in a row so."

"I would certainly pay you the respect I would pay any other gentlemen, sir," I assured him. "Well then McGregor, you may call me Ernie, and I am going to rent a room at the inn and I would be quite pleased if you would join me. You could clean up and I would quite like to continue this conversation, if you would do me the honor?"

He stared at me with complete disbelief, barely understanding. He searched around him as though looking for someone else I could have been addressing my invitation to. Finding none he turned back to me. "Are you blind Mr. Frankenstein?"

I laughed genuinely. "I told you, Ernie, please, and no I am not, I am merely intrigued by the first decent man I have met in ages, especially to find him such and outcast. What do you say?"

He positively beamed at my complement. "Well I could just loves to join you, Ernie."

He stood up and walked half way up the road with me then broke the silence with the remark, "Wells bind me knicker's in a twist, I'ms as thrilled as Big Joe when Miss Susy bakes a pie." At which I laughed all the way to the inn.

We did not go to sleep that night. He was certainly the most interesting man I had ever spoken to, or rather was spoken to by. His tales and tellings were plenty for the mind, and I had nothing I wanted to tell; nor that I would have felt worthy of his time. He had all kinds of stories about growing up, all different kinds of innocent mischief he had gotten into. I could tell he liked to talk about his mother, who had passed on with a sickness just a week before he lost his eye. From what I heard it seemed that it was she who had put such strong ethics into his head.

He talked about dreams, while it was unfathomable to me how he could talk with such zeal about them when they were so out of reach. He spoke of little inventions he had imagined up with very useful purposes. I suspected he would be an excellent scholar, would he have ever had the mean for an education.

I became most intrigued in the early hours of the morning when it seemed he was just voicing thoughts as they passed. His ponderings were things I never considered and once I heard them wondered why. I felt for sure if I had written down everything he said I would have had before me the greatest book of philosophy, ever. He asked how men could act like they knew everything when we were simple creatures in a big world. He proclaimed the foolishness of men who tried to avoid change it all its many forms. He wondered how men could fear their own creator, and questioned why people often constructed the own demise so perfectly in attempting to take down another. He said these and many other things, concluding as the sun was about up, "Truly, I understand very little about the ways of mens, but for most I do finds myself caught up in them at some point. But I's tell you, I was always, without exception, all baffled by what made people afraid of any one's not like them. Everyone's always trying to make every one else the same, it just don't make no sense to me, I would be so bored with all the people I knows being like me, what would you talk about? Nah, meeting different people makes life…interesting."

With that he fell asleep and I stared at him in shock of the reality of his conviction. "How right you are my friend." And for the first time in a long time I was not afraid to establish that connection, I felt as though since the day Victor died I had been waiting for some one like McGregor. Someone I could help while they helped me so it would be fair. For the first time in what seemed like forever, it felt as though there was hope.

The next couple weeks were fun, and that in itself amazed me. I was little more than a child yet it had been years since I had experienced that feeling, or enjoyed myself in any way. We would spend afternoons hiking up into the woods, then we would climb as far up as we could manage on the tallest tree we could find and look back on the town. We spent hours laughing and trying to walk and slide across the frozen lake, or trekked up the mountain to where the snow was with large smooth scraps of materials and slid down. When it was really, bitterly cold, we would sit inside by a fireplace and read out loud, or make sketches of some invention idea we were hatching. It was the best time of my life, but all good things come to an end.

After the incident with the unknown man at the bar I had realized I could not deny my new nature, and to meet regularly with McGregor I had to "feed" regularly. I hated doing it; every life I took gnawed at my conscious and drew the greatest sense of disgrace within me, but it was worth it for those hours of carefree happiness.

I took careful precautions, like running to other towns and hiding the bodies. I went at times no one would notice my absence, or presence on the other side of things; usually after the world at large had gone to bed. But I forgot one thing, one careless mistake and it all came crashing down in the worst way possible.

The closet I had dragged the man into that night had held preparation for spring; gardening tools and flowers seeds. It was very early spring, exactly one year from the day I left the orphanage, my nineteenth birthday, when someone went in there for the first time that season. McGregor and I were in a small two bedroom apartment I'd purchased, getting ready to go fishing that morning as the lake had just recently melted.

I was walking down the road by myself, as McGregor had insisted I go ahead and he'd be behind in a bit, when I saw the mob coming up the street. A bunch of the men were carrying on with torches and pitchforks and the whole show up the street. Curious I stopped one I remembered to be called Johnson and asked what was going on.

In a huff he let out, "Went to the spring storage this morning and God bless my heart what did I find. The body of Charles Whithers, covered in blood!"

I gulped, "How was he killed?"

Not sure, seems to be some kind of weird cut on the neck, but he's been missing for weeks; it's an awful nasty mess. I reckon it's the mark of one of his bastard little inventions," he muttered darkly.

"Sorry, whose?" I asked pulling my eyebrows together in confusion.

"That wretch McGregor of course," he grumbled, "don't know how he got on this long but we'll have his life for this one I assure you that. No one will have to worry about that unsightly figure poisoning their day any more," he promised with a dark gleam in his eyes.

I felt as though a hand ice had gripped my heart. I looked up and saw that last of the crowd disappearing into the apartment building. Even if Johnson wasn't there and I had been able to run full speed I wouldn't have made it. The front of the mob would already be in the room, the deed done. Indeed when I arrived the ends of the group were just mutilating his already deformed body. I could not breathe.

I stood stock still in the middle of the room staring at him as they put him inside a black bag. Johnson came over to me.

"Mighty good of you, trying to reach to him like you did, but he just wasn't worth it. A lost cause since the day he was born that one, no good came of his life."

"I did it." I breathed.

"Pardon?"

"I killed Charles, that night I came to town, the blood, on my shirt…"

He looked at me sympathetically. "I suspected the shameless bastard would be putting that into your young head, he started framing you that very night, but we won't be fooled. You were in some heroic fight, remember? I can't remember the details because I was drunk as hell that night but I am sure you do, that's where the blood came from. You are a fine man Ernest, just look in the mirror, you'll never forget it."

He smiled at me patted my shoulder and walked out the door, helping the men drag the bag behind them. I stood there for a while staring at the doorway where my one true companion had disappeared through while a torrent of emotions raced through me; anger, sadness, confusion, disbelief, until finally abandonment and utter solitude settled in.

I turned away, unable to look at the empty doorway where he had always stood for at least a half hour before coming in, unable to belief the apartment was in fact half his. It was then that I saw the items on the kitchen table, the reason McGregor had lingered and lost his life.

My eyes burned as I got closer and I picked up the scrap of paper for a card.

Dear "Ernie,"

Thank you for looking beyond my face and listening.

Hope you have a very happy nineteenth birthday, you deserve it!

Your friend,

McGregor

P.S. I know the gifts aren't much but I don't believe you to hold much in store for material wealth, so these are from my hands to your heart, hopefully.

There were two more items one the table, presents. The first was a little wooden figure; McGregor had taken to whittling for a hobby as a young boy. The figurine was he and I standing side by side in perfect detail. I clutched it tightly and looked to the other. It was a tiny photo album, and inside an elaborate family tree, with two whole pages each for both my mother and Victor, who I had spoken about most. There were bits of writing illustrating contributions of all kinds made to society throughout the generations by my ancestors. McGregor had held me on some absurd pedestal for my education, and was ever sure that I had come from a long line of great intellectuals. He loved to research, and I could just see him spending joyous hours tracking down my lineage. Feeling as though I would suffocate if I stayed there any longer I gathered the gifts up in my bag and left, sprinting like the wind to the lake.

It was down in a valley just beyond the town so when I sat down on the shore the mountains that rose up around me reflected below me and made the world feel entirely endless.

I could not comprehend how they could kill McGregor. He was the best man I had met, far better then myself, but for some reason they couldn't see that.

People were ignorant. My mind was suddenly taken back to the Creature, my brother's "monster." By description he was everything to detest and fear. Yet, I had felt since I'd heard the story that the Creature was not so, but a compassionate, if hideous, soul who was driven to another nature by excruciating loneliness, including even the rejection of his own creator.

I could understand the tortured soul; I knew how it turned the best of men into unrecognizable brutes. But no one else could, and they would never even try; even for a character so pure and strong he came out of such discrimination untainted, no, not even for McGregor.

People took one look at you and judged you for life, the Creature never had a chance, and McGregor wasn't allowed one either. No, I did not think the Creature was a monster, and certainly not my dear friend. I thought, I _knew_, I was, and my brother, but they paid the price. Yet while people scorned those noble spirits for their appearance they came to me relentlessly for the same. They were blind; blind, ignorant, judgmental fools.

And for that they were the worst monsters, people. The species which created such thing, such ideas, were only designing a reflection of themselves which the labeled 'monster'. It was that dark part within them they tried to separate, but only upset the natural balance and made if more apparent.

I think the Creature was the final test, I was the consequence. For now it was too late to re-teach them. The better nature of mankind was so foreign that to return to it would feel like years of undoing. Everyone went along thinking we're progressing, but the fact was we were destroying humanity, from within.

It was only a matter of time. Those who retained any innocence, truth, or beauty within themselves died, taking it with them. The rest could only hope to become like me, aware and outside.

Instead they would continue endlessly down the wrong path, extinguishing fake monster only to breed those within themselves. They, we, had cultivated our own doom so precisely that it, I, was inescapable.

After so many struggles to find my way, to make things right, I finally knew my task. I sat on that shore, the world reflected at my feet, and everything was clear. In a world of ignorance and false judgment, I would be a lesson, a punishment to mankind.

"It is my dark responsibility and essential duty; my own concrete fate."


	10. 9 Consumed

**100 years later**

I was being tied to a stake in the middle of the town square, but that wasn't what I was concentrating. Instead I was recalling how the last century had passed by, barely noticing as they bound me to that wooden shaft and lit the piles of timber beneath me.

After I left the town where McGregor and I had spent endless days together I felt a desire to see the world, now that I had endless time and could always find the resources. I also did not want to stay there, or anywhere; I felt a need to keep moving. So, I headed west, to the Americas. It was a remarkable experience, swimming across the ocean. It was endless, but peaceful. My muscles never tired, and I never came up short of breath. There was one night I swam among a bunch of huge whales as they sang their hauntingly beautiful song. They were incomparably pure creatures in contrast to humans, if only because they were much simpler. It was then I realized that while it is no sin to learn, ignorance was nothing to be scorned at. Human beings just sucked at balancing; at knowing their limits. That night was the most majestic event of my life, and that's saying something.

I went to the north continent first, perusing mainly the new nation of the US. It was a land I had deeply convicted feelings about. The people there were young and full of bright ideas for the future, idealists. They imagined theirs as the greatest country on earth and were pursuing a dream of spreading coast to coast. Yet I felt flaws I could not understand in their thinking, and felt in years to come there would be turmoil as they expanded both physically and intellectually into the unknown. Every generation of mankind felt a need to push their boundaries just a little further.

Although it was not exactly the kind of trouble I sensed far on the horizon conflict did break out near the end of my time there in the form of a civil war. It was beyond me how their could be any question about the enslavement of human beings at that point in civilization but it seemed to me that if there were two men in the whole world they would find a way to disagree on most every issue, and one would always believe he was better than the other. It was a blood bath I could not bare and left quickly.

The people of Latin America were of a fiery nature, and I sometimes found that alluring, and other times obnoxious. But I stayed with many of the warmest families I could imagine and learned how a vibrant culture could persevere through most anything.

I would have to say my favorite place on earth was the Amazon Rainforest, where I traveled next. The people were interesting but quiet and secretive so I did not spend too much time with them. Instead I marveled at the vast wild life and extraordinary plant life. I felt myself grow closer to that end of living things than people, and realized that nature was not meant to be a foreboding force; we had merely fallen out of touch with it.

I went on to spend some time in Africa which I enjoyed thoroughly. I could not believe how much the landscape changed from tip to head. I observed tribal dances and ancient rituals so different from anything I had ever known and was reminded of how vast the world is, and how much there was inside it. Often we are caught up in our own little piece of it, unable to see beyond.

My hardest journey was traversing the frozen land of Russia. But I learned from the resourceful people who lived in that land that just because something is hard doesn't mean it's impossible, and it's always worth it.

In the far east of China I saw magnificent ports where cultures from all over the mixed. I conversed with the noblest of philosophers and the dirtiest of criminals. I saw preservation of the past and preparation for the future.

Everywhere I traveled I found faults, but I also found good people, magnificent achievements, and hope. Despite all of the messings of man the universe had a way of balancing out its good and evil. Each place I went I made another solemn discovery, but as I learned exactly what was wrong with the world it did not discourage me, for I saw that it could be fixed. Not to be perfect, but to be better. You just had to make it one day at a time and do the best you could.

As though in agreement the flames were rising up around me so I closed my eyes and let myself be consumed.


	11. Epilogue: Beginnings

I was passing through Europe in my travels at a time near the end of the witch hunts the first time I was burned. I heard a couple people walking up the street around the corner as I fed, talking about some poor girl I'm sure was innocent they had burned the night before. I could have dropped the body and been a mile away by the time they rounded the corner but I was tired, not physically of course but mentally. Plus I was intrigued; I had not tried to kill myself since those first couple weeks and really no longer felt the desire to. However I also had nothing tying me to life and was filled with curiosity as fire was one thing I had some how missed in my original attempts.

So I let them tie me up and light the fire. There was a cold precision to the way they did it that illustrated how experienced they were; a malicious look in their eyes as they carried on with their extermination of anyone slightly different. I watched the night away as the hot flames licked my skin without burning it. When the stake collapse I let myself go down limp with it. The fire continued to burn up around me and showered ash over my body, quickly making it disappear from view. A short while later the crowd left. Sighing I realized that they would probably clean up the evidence in the morning, so I got up, dusted myself of and went on my way, just a minuscule bit the wiser.

It was different this time, at least at first. I had encountered the native clan isolated away in the Himalayan Mountains at a place I doubted anyone without my abilities would be able to reach. It was a sight beyond words. From what I could tell they had had no contact whatsoever with the outside world. As such they were quite primitive, still believing in the demons of their traditional religion, which is why of course I was being burned. Unlike the _sophisticated_ European witch hunters though, there was fear in their actions, not malice. Where others were endlessly reassured by my face these archaic people could sense my foreboding power, my dark nature.

It was ironic but I was not surprised as it was something I had discovered long ago. Before I had even begun to travel the world I had concluded that the better nature of mankind was a thing of the past, which was disappearing more and more as civilization progressed and became less civilized. During my travels I liked most the people I met in the deepest recesses of the Amazon rainforest and the most untouched plots of Africa. My pale face made me have to work for their trust, so they passed a judgment based on truth as all man should, not the camouflage of my false appearance or any one else's.

As time went on I tried to make myself worthy of dealing the punishment I had to by feeding as much as I could on those who exemplified most clearly those appalling aspects of man, and it was in the places of ancient civilization, not modern, that I found this hardest; their simplicity was honorable. Of course it was not impossible. No single man was perfect, and in every group there were problems. It merely seemed as man became more complex so did their troubles.

As such, it made me sick when the imperialism movement began, as I pictured the destruction of mankind spreading, and I was right, and fighting had begun shortly after, and I saw the end no where in sight.

At this point in my thoughts it was deep in the night, the fire had died down around and on top of me like the last time, and the people of the clan had all gone to bed so I stood up.

As I looked around at the wondrous haven the people lived in deep inside the mountain I prayed that its beauty would remain untainted by the outside world and all its issues; because even if it got better it would never be perfect, for there was something inhumane about humanity. It was only after I had transformed into a proclaimed monster that I developed a conscience, that I regretted the death's I had caused. And it was only living as a vampire that I grew from the real monster I was before. In that out of this world sanctuary, I was not needed, or welcome, because it was perfect, a garden or Eden; I was the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but I would not let them be tempted.

The ash fell off my shoulders and formed a cloud around me which settled back down as I stepped out of the remains of the fire. I was suddenly reminded of another supposedly mythical creature like myself; the phoenix, reborn from its own ashes. I liked the idea that I was two creatures, one of light and one of dark. Truly, I seemed as much a phoenix as a vampire (No feathers, no fangs, what's the difference?) for I felt as though I had been reborn many times, lived many lives, and now it was happening again. Exactly 100 years from the day McGregor was murdered the phase of my life I spent exploring the world and learning my place had come to a close and an unknown future lay ahead. And once again it was my birthday.

As I walked on, I didn't walk away any more, I sang quietly,

"_Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to….."_

My life was far from perfect, but I was more than content to know it held no more endings, only new beginnings.


End file.
